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Interactive Sales Chart using MS Excel

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Finally, I got some time to sit down and do what I love most – write a blog post to make you awesome in Excel. After a whirlwind trip to Sydney, I am back in India to spend few days with my kids & wife before rushing to Australia to run 2nd leg of my training programs (in Perth, Melbourne & Brisbane). I did 2 sessions in Sydney – one for KPMG and other for public and both went very well. We got lots of positive feedback and people really loved it. I am saving the details for another post, but today lets talk about Interactive Sales Chart using Excel.

Take a look at the Interactive Sales Chart

First, take a look at interactive sales chart. Today, you will learn how to build this using Excel.

Interactive Sales Chart in Excel - Demo

Inspiration for this chart

Before we learn how you can create such a chart, let me tell where the inspiration came from. Yesterday, Persol, a forum member asked, How to make an info-radar chart, where he mentioned the below chart from Good.is

Political Climate - Interactive Chart from Good.is

[Click here to play with this chart]

While I took inspiration from the above chart, I replaced the radar chart with a regular column chart (as column charts are easier to read) and modified the data to a sales data set.

How to create interactive sales chart in Excel?

First, take a look at the data

The sales data for this chart looked like this:

Data for interactive sales chart

I have set up this data in an Excel Table called as tblSales so that it is easier to write formulas.

The formulas

To calculate various values in the chart, we use ample doses of SUMIFS formula.

The Interactivity

When you click on any year, region or product name, we run worksheet_seletionchange event. This tells our calculation engine which year, region & product are chosen. Then the formulas would (re)calculate the data for charts. This updates the charts & conditional formats.

[Related: Show on-demand details in Excel using VBA]

Here is how the interactive chart works:

Interactive Sales Chart in Excel - the nuts & bolts

How to create interactive charts like this – Video

Since the actual mechanics of this are quite elaborate, I made a short video (15 min) explaining how various parts of this chart work. Please watch it below.

[You can watch the video on our Youtube channel too]

Download Interactive Sales Chart Workbook

Click here to download the workbook & play with it. Examine the macros & formulas to learn more.

How do you like this chart?

I really liked Good.is chart and wanted to see how much of it we can do in Excel. It was a fun exercise. I have noticed that such charts excite people (decision makers too) and make your reports fun.

What about you? How do you like the interactive sales chart? What additions / modifications would you do to it? Please share your thoughts using comments.

Create Interactive Charts using Excel

Interactive charts are one my favorite visualizations. They let users play with the chart & decide what they want. So, naturally I write about them every now and then. Please go thru these examples if you want to learn various interactive charting techniques in Excel.

I also recommend enrolling in our Excel + VBA Class if you want to learn these techniques and create stunning reports & charts. Click here to learn more about our Excel + VBA training program.

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95 Responses to “Interactive Sales Chart using MS Excel ”

  1. Peter says:

    Great chart Chandoo,
    It would be nice to make a additional selection where you can chose what kind of chart the data will be viewed in. Bars, Lines etc.
     
    Peter
     

  2. Matt says:

    Outstanding!

  3. Andrew says:

    Damn I want to do this so bad! But Excel 2003 doesn't seem to work with this.

    • Lubos says:

      Andrew, 

      I use Excel 2003 too. All you need to do is replace the SUMIFS formulas in sheet Calculation with formulas with SUMPRODUCT. I'm sure Chandoo explained it somewhere.

      Excel 2003 doesn't support SUMIFS. But in my opinion SUMPRODUCT is even better. 

      It takes some time to rewrite the formulas but as a result all the interactivity will work.

      Lubos 

  4. mustafa says:

    thats really awesome & simple thanks for good working and good ideas.

  5. Christian says:

    Thank Persol & Chandoo,

    Awesome chart.

    My critique would include a lack of comparison year to year - the graph is showing many years, but lacks the ability to visualise/ measure the change. Quite static in many repects.
    I know they are showing the level of interest in issues realtive to each other, but with so many years history I think they could have added more value by allowing the graph to not only show actual yearly values - but perhaps to see variance between two particular years, or the variance between the three party categories in a particular year.

    Lovely visualisation and interactivity, value add potential for analysis if I were to make suggestion for improvement.

    Cheers - and see you in Bris Vegas (Brisbane)

    • Chandoo says:

      I agree. We can take the same data and visualize it differently so the focus will be on yearly trends. Would you like to give it a try and share the workbook with all of us?

  6. Jez says:

    Awesome - as usual - and I have adopted many of the techniques from this blog - but strangely (and I am showing my ignorance a bit here) but I can follow understand and implement the techniques in the example however I have no idea how to "switch off" the area outside A1:M25 - how is this done ?  ie. I cannot select cell P12 - why not ?  It doesn't even show P as a column heading ?!!  What am I missing ? 

    • Matt Nuttall says:

      It has something to do w/ the scroll area.  If you open VBA, select the worksheet "Interactive Sales Chart" on the side and change the Scroll Area to A1:Z500 (for example) it will open up other rows/columns.  It was blank to begin with and returns blank after you hit enter.

      • Jay says:

        Actually, It was the Property "StandardWidth" being set to 0 (which apparently sizes the sheet to end with the last used column).  Setting that to 8.43 (or whatever the other sheets are set to) exposes additional columns  Setting it back to 0 returns it to the Original behavior.  This is a cool new "tip" for me to know! 

    • Chandoo says:

      Thank you. It is really simple once you know it.

      1. Just select all the columns from P till end (select column P, then CTRL+SHIFT+End)
      2. Hide columns
      3. Select rows 26 till end (select row 26, CTRL+SHIFT+Down)
      4. Hide rows.
      5. and we are done.
  7. Fred says:

    Nice Chart!  I guess I can use it at work.

  8. Kiev says:

    This is really a great post, i love it so much, it can definitely can be used at  work. The most important thing i learn from your post is always open to new ideas. Thank you so much.

  9. Linda says:

    Thanks for the great post.  One thing I do not understand.  How do you get the link between the region-wise breakup graph in the Calculations and the graphic on the chart?

    Thanks,

    Linda

  10. Waseem says:

    Hi Chandoo

    This is great stuff and I have already started copying it for my work. Just one question please. How do we change Bar color (in bar chart) when we select a product along x - axis?

    • Fred says:

      you will need to create 2 rows of the same chosen data set.  Say you have picked 2011 and a set of data would show up.  you want to duplicate one more set.

      First set: the bars not click would become zero.  So only the chosen bar would stand out and give it a color.
      Second set: the bars not click would show their figures.  But the bar chosen would become zero.  So you give the bars another set of color.

      when you create the graph you will need to specify both data line.  One with only the bar of you choice showing black, in this example.  And the bars not chosen would become orange/red.

      hope this help.      

  11. xsaed says:

    i'm using excel 2007, the camera function is not working... i.e the inline charts are not showing in the interactive chart...
    what should i do? 
    one other thing, how to select hidden columns to unhide it if i use ctrl+end?

  12. Rahul says:

    Hi Chandoo

    Nice post, Really loved it and curious to know what next to come. I just noticed one thing that I can't able to see your last month articles like u posted the articles in month of April and march. When I click on page 2, I found very old articles that u posted it in month of Feb. However, it should come the April's and march month article. Can you fix this problem as I need an article which is written on VBA. 

    Thanks in advance. 

    • Rahul says:

      Sorry for the above post. Now I can see your previous post. I don't know why earlier i was not to see the post. Thanx

  13. ahmed says:

    Hi Chandoo,

    I really liked your work. I wanted to make one for my school, but I couldn't get it right.

    Can you help me make it for me, please. Here is my file

    http://www.4shared.com/file/191HytlH/My_School_data.html
        

  14. Waseem says:

    Chandoo I have another scenario to deal with. Just like we click in the rows to pick a particular year, can we select multiple entries? Actually I need to put certain products along this axis and my objective is to produce results for one product as well as selecting multiple products (the way it works and looks like in your worksheet).

    Thanks for making our life easier 🙂

  15. I love this blog and can’t get enough of every aspect of it. You are a fabulously talented writer and manage to make everything so relatable. You are so good at this in fact, that sometimes while reading I feel like our hearts and minds become one and basically I feel as if I am reading my own thoughts. 

  16. Lubos says:

    Chandoo, this is great. I use this technique already.
    However I could learn somenting new AGAIN. This little feature SHOW/HIDE HELP is a great idea how to get rid of the information which is firstly important to know but later redundant.
    Thanks for the idea, I will use that in my dashboards.

    Lubos 

  17. Neil says:

    Very impressive, both in terms of the output and how it's put together.

    My only comment would be to include an additional line of code that re-calculates the calculations sheet, for those of us that have calculation set to manual by default.

  18. Lionel says:

    Chandoo,

    Firstly, impressive, love your work.

    I have added more regions, but how do I move the "Products" down 4 rows and make the chart bigger on the Interactive chart page. Also, the show hide help doesn't work for me.

    Lionel

  19. Paul says:

    Love this chart!

    How would I add more products? is this easy to do?

  20. Sunil says:

    How do i get my bars started at the same place.. if i select all regions my bars start at one place and if i select north the graph starts at a different place on the X axis and if i select south it gets started at a different place on the X axis.. this is creating problem for me to overlap the two charts .. please advice
     

  21. Neha says:

    Hi Chandoo,
    Awesome tutorial. Never though one could learn it so fast. 

  22. Narendra says:

    Hi Chandoo,

    Greate charts !!!
       

  23. Chintan Parmar says:

    Hi,

    Can We Create Political Climate chart in excel..... I tried lot but not able to get success in this chart.....

    Would u please sugget about the same....

  24. Chintan Parmar says:

    Hi,
    Can We Create Political Climate chart in excel….. I tried lot but not able to get success in this chart…..
    Would u please sugget about the same….

  25. [...] "chart" macroClick OKRepeat above steps with the remaining rectangles.Recommended posts:Interactive Sales Chart using MS Excel Download excel *.xlsm fileChart.xlsmNo related posts.Recommended categoriesAutomateChartsExcelvba [...]

  26. frank says:

    Hi,
     
    I love your charts. How can I do this chart with more than 1 chart value. On your chart there's only sales for the products, but what if I want sales and revenue numbers on the same chart? Also can I just delete the region part of the chart? I just want it to have the products and year with sales and revenue data.?

    • Ursula says:

      Hi Frank (or others), I have the same question; I'd like to include more data on the same chart, I don't seen an answer here, did you work it out perhaps? If so, would you share what you did please?

      Thanks! 

  27. OPS says:

    Hi,
     
    Something wrong with the video?
    Can you please solve this....

  28. Ursula says:

    This is a super chart, and I would really like to work something like this out for data I'm collecting for my PhD, however, as in my reply to Frank's post above, I would not only to like to visualise one variable at a time; so to use the example given in this video I would like to visualise sales as well as other variables like demand and stock of each of the products simultaneously on the chart; could someone help me in doing that please? 

    Also, I would prefer to have a line graph instead of bars...?

    Any help would be much appreciated. Many thanks! 

  29. Venkat says:

    Thanks a ton Chandoo. Interactive chart looks simple but awesome. I am more convinced to join your class

    Keep posting

  30. Pulkit says:

    Great work Chandoo!

    I am really thrilled to see your work, I am learning new things which i could not believe i can do with the spreadsheet!

    This interactive dashboard looks really fabulous, I will get my hands on it. A big thanks and keep up the good work!

  31. Nishant says:

    Hi chandoo,

    A very good tutorial and very helpful video made by you. Thank you for sharing all this. I will be working on demand analysis, using the logic you have explained for Interactive chart. Hope I am able excute it the same way you have done it, or else I will be back with my mails flooding in your inbox 🙂
    Have a great day ahead.    
    Nishant

  32. Reginald Vaz says:

    Awesome...The Interactive Sales Chart
    Thanks Chandoo for sharing this...

  33. Vikas Dhand says:

    Dear Chandoo, First of all i would like to thank you for creating such a wonderfull forum on excel. I was having very basic knowledge of Excel, but by following ur blog i have become excel master in my Office. Now i teach excel to my Assistants who are supposed to make reports.
    I am having query related to this interactive sales chart. In Calculations sheet please let me know about =valueproductpicked, valueregionpicked. Is it macro or sum new formula. also how it is connected to Interactive sales chart file where "pick an year" "region and "product are selected.

  34. Santhosh says:

    Hi Chandoo,
    I would like to thank you for creating such a wonderful chart by effectively using the simple functions in excel.I have a question on the data labels.When data label is added in the chart and we choose a "yea"r and then if we choose a "region" #N/A's appear and data labels disappear.Any thoughts around that.
     
     

    • Kylee says:

      Hi Chandoo,
      I am also puzzled like Santhosh  about how to make the data labels work. Can you shed your wisdom please?
      Thanks very much, Kylee.

  35. AKhilesh says:

    Dear Chandoo,
    This Video is not working and giving some error. Can you Upload it again.
    Thanks,

  36. Paul says:

    Great site, Great article, but I am coming unstuck as I build my formula.

    =SUMIFS(tblOverview[Jan],tblOverview[Business],valGroup,tblOverview[Category],valHardware)

    Works a treat (Wow, so impressed) but adding a new condition

    =SUMIFS(tblOverview[Jan],tblOverview[Business],valGroup,tblOverview[Category],valHardware,o28,valGroup) falls over with a #Value error.

    Putting o28=valGroup in a different cell gets the result  TRUE.

    If I click [Show calculation steps] the formula appears to resolve (with the ranges and values being returned as I would expect) and it says "the next evaluation will result in an error" which, I guess, is the sumifs part.

    Help! 🙂

    • Chandoo says:

      Thank you Paul. Please note that all data columns must be of same size fo SUMIFS to work. In your case, 028 is a single cell, and SUMIFS cannot evaluate the condition o28=valGroup when rest of the conditions are looking in a range.

      • Paul says:

        Thanks Chandoo,  ValGroup is also a single cell (from your article how to click on a chart axis to change the chart data).  I did try replacing o28 with  025:o33 but received the same error so that threw me off the scent a bit.  I'll keep playing with it as this is a powerful formula you have introduced to me.

        • Paul says:

          Please do not make further replies to this post ~ my logic is flawed and the result would be stupid 🙂  (Does not stop the concept being brilliant, Thanks again).

  37. [...] blog, so it was hard to pick just one for this list of favourites. However, I finally selected this interactive sales chart example, because it incorporates several useful [...]

  38. Kylee says:

    Hi Chandoo,
    Absolutely love the design and simplicity of this graph. Half spent half of today getting my head around it to make it work for my data. Fifth attempte = sucess 🙂
    One question, how could we add budgeted sales for the applicable year to show as a bullet point style graph superimposed over the actual sales bar graph?
    Thanks so much, Kylee.

  39. Rodrigo says:

    Hi Chandoo,
    you have a lovely website and system of learning. But i was stuying this sheet and got frustrated while constructing a dashboard on my own. How can i use the same effect or use drop-down lists, to this situation:
    Its for my Balanced Scorecard sheet, so i have a number of indicators and its values. The vary by year, perspective and indicator. So i wanted to select: In the finance perspective, the wallet share indicator, of the 2012 year. So it would select the values (Jan, Fev, Mar...) and mount a graphic.

  40. abc says:

    Hi chandoo,
    How to change format cell when it's clicked.

  41. Iuliana says:

    Hi Chandoo,
     
    first thank you for this example but..i am trying to build this with different table names etc ..would like to know the TRUE result next to the year on sheet with calculation..what is the aim of that?
     
    Thank you,
    I

  42. Sriram says:

    Hi
    This is really splendid work - simple but very powerful. I am adopting this to present a few results using this concept. The modifications are
    1.instead of presenting just one series I am presenting 2 series -clustered bar graphs
    2. it is comparing certain distributions region wise (instead of year wise).
     
    Now, all is well until I prepare the overlapping graphs. There instead of all the null values being hidden I get an expanding graph with gaps. By the end of the process the graph display becomes miniscule. Any workaround? - what am I missing?

  43. Sandeep says:

    I used the technique expressed here and derived the results I wanted. Thanks for the education and the entertainment you provide here. 
    I still want to raise a query here being that based on the SUMIFS which generates the chart data (excluding the #NAs) as per different values picked up the graphs draw but their colour schemes etc. have to be painfully corrected to ensure consistency across. Is there a way to ensure we do it once for all the combinations?
    I tried copy-pasting formats across but that does not work in Excel 2007.
    Regards,
    Sandeep
     

    • Pharasi says:

      Hi Sandeep,

      Can you please help me in making exactly this kind of a chart with my data. I am trying to replace it with my data but the chart area isnt big enough.

      Thank you
      Kartika

  44. Joe says:

    Hello, I am using excel 2007, the file downloaded looks does not works on it. Not sure if you could have 2007 version? That would be great! Thanks.

  45. Leonor says:

    Its like you read my thoughts! You seem to grasp so much approximately this, like you wrote the e book in it or something.
    I feel that you just can do with some p.c. to power the message home a bit, however
    instead of that, that is excellent blog.
    An excellent read. I will certainly be back.

  46. Carlos says:

    please correct me if im wrong but, it would it not be easier if u used a pivot table instead of the sumif?

  47. Carlos says:

    UPS, forgot the question, the part i was unsure of was the macro that runs when you click on a year a product or a region..

  48. Ray says:

    Hello Chandoo,

    Thank you for the example, it's very useful for me.
    But I want to know how to build a Marco that display what you select? for example you select year 2001, then it shows in the calculation sheet.

    Thank you in advance
    Ray

  49. Daniel says:

    Hi Chandoo, GREAT graph and great site!!!! I have a question on the data labels. When data label is added in the chart and we select a “year" and then if we choose a “region” #N/A’s appear and data labels disappear. Any thoughts on this? Thanks and hugs from Argentina.

  50. […] chandoo.org/wp/2012/05/09/interactive-sales-chart-in-excel/ to get the excel workbook and know more about this. Interactive Sales chart using Mi… Video […]

  51. Kirk Williams says:

    Love the video and chart you make it seem simple, but it's the thought, how can I do it in Excel that's the real take away. Don't let anyone say it can't be done.

  52. Kay says:

    Love this Dashboard...
    I have a issue...When I add a hyperlink to other Sheet, the Error'1004': The item with the specifed name wasn't found.

    How can I fix it?

    Please and Thanks

    • Kerem says:

      Hello Kay;

      I have the same problem, did you find a solution to your problem?

      By the way Chandoo, thanks for the great site and great tips...

      Thanks,

      • Kerem says:

        Hello Again;

        Within minutes I found the right phrase to put into google "Application.Intersect hyperlink error 1004" to give me the correct results; and found out changing ActiveCell to Target does the trick. I can share the link if linking to some other site is ok.

  53. Manfred says:

    Hi Chandoo.

    Excellente dashboard but I have a problem. I´m using Excel for Mac 2011 and it gives me an error with the macro (error 424). It seems to be something related to "ActiveCell.Value" but I don´t know how to fix it. Could you help me?

  54. Sebastian says:

    Hello, I did the dashboard and I understood everything except the vba code, could you explain it to me in simple words, the steps that you did? in case you dont remember, specialy the application.intersect I searched for it but still dont understands

    Thank you so much you are super helpful and kind with us excel noobs 🙂

    Private Sub Worksheet_SelectionChange(ByVal Target As Range)

    If Not Application.Intersect(ActiveCell, [plistyear]) Is Nothing Then
    [valyearp] = ActiveCell.Value
    ElseIf Not Application.Intersect(ActiveCell, [plistReg]) Is Nothing Then
    [valregp] = ActiveCell.Value
    ElseIf Not Application.Intersect(ActiveCell, [plistProd]) Is Nothing Then
    [valprodp] = ActiveCell.Value
    End If
    End Sub

  55. Farzaneh says:

    Hi Everyone,
    I was trying to find a Budget Gap analysis template or Dashboard, is there anything here in this website, Thank you so much! 🙂

  56. Ryan says:

    Chandoo thank you for sharing. This is a killer interactive chart! I am working on adapting the model to support my product offering. We retire products and introduce new products. Given this situation, the number of products displayed would differ from year to year. Can suggest a solution to dynamically display the products for a given year?

  57. CHAITANYA says:

    hI CHANDOO...HOW ARE YOU ABLE TO GET THE VALUES IN D4 AND D5 IN CLACULATION SHEET BASED ON THE SELECTION MADE IN THE CHART? CAN YOU EXPLAIN THAT PART?

  58. Anshul Singhal says:

    Hi Chandoo,

    First of all I want to thank you for enlighten me with all nuts and bolts of excel as I am following you from last couple of years. Though this is my first comment on your website.

    This particular article is great as always and I have learned a lot from this as well. However just want to add one point that it would be great to create this interactive chart without the use of macro as many people including me don't possess technical skills to write down the same. I try by myself to modify the same and pleased to share that it can be done without macro as well and I am sure you know this better than me.

    Once again thank you so much for such a lovely blog.

  59. 1excel.info says:

    I love the ways you organized the chart and using color. Thank you a lot, wish you more success

  60. Archana says:

    Very useful and interactive charts Chandoo.. Amidst the Powerpoint presentation, you have proved even the more vague excel sheets also could be in a presentable format. I just tried to have a look into your sales chart, however the macro does not run due to missing objects. Could you please check

  61. Juvabelle Peptide Cream says:

    This design is spectacular! You obviously know how to keep a reader
    amused. Between your wit and your videos, I was almost moved to start my own blog (well,
    almost...HaHa!) Fantastic job. I really enjoyed what you had to say,
    and more than that, how you presented it.
    Too cool!

  62. brian says:

    Im using Excel 2016 on a mac and the selection of years, products or regions gives me a 424 error... object required.
    Seems that the mac version doesn't like:
    [valYearPicked] = Active.cell.Value

    Not sure it's picking up on where to get the[valYearPicked] data from...
    any suggestions?

  63. brian says:

    Sorry that was a typo... it's how you have it in yours
    [valYearPicked] = ActiveCell.Value

  64. brian says:

    nevermind - figured it out. With Excel 2016 on a mac you have to specify the object:
    sheets("calculations").[valYearPicked] = activecell.value

  65. Chip Bender says:

    I tried the link supplied to download the Excel example spreadsheet but it indicated the site could not be reached. I would really have liked to see this spreadsheet as I find it very fascinating on how the coding and processes would be performed.

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