Recently, Microsoft Power BI introduced a very useful visualization, called key influencers visualization. As the name suggests, this is a chart of key parameters that effect a measure or outcome.
For example, you have customer satisfaction rating as a measure. Now you want to know which aspects of your data impact the ratings most? You can create the key influencer visual and Power BI finds all the top ranking influencers (using rules and machine learning).
The output can go like this:
How to read this chart?
Let’s look at top influencer for rating to be LOW: If role of the rating person is “Consumer” then their rating is 2.57 times likely to be low than other roles.
Likewise, if company size is <5000, then their rating is 1.48 times likely to be low than other company sizes.
As soon as I saw this chart in Power BI demo, I went…
Hot damn, that looks interesting!!! Can we get this in Excel?
Of course, Excel is a good few laps behind Power BI when it comes to data viz. But that won’t stop a data nerd, will it?
So here we go, a faked “key influencer chart in Excel”. Read on to learn how to create this yourself, from almost any data.
Key influencer chart in Excel – demo
Before we learn how to make this, let me present the chart itself.
Create your own key influencer chart in Excel…
So you are ready to make the chart? Just follow below steps and your key influencers will be identified, sorted and presented in a tidy chart.
Step 1: Arrange your data
This method works with data in one table. You can scale it to a dimensional model (star schema) with some creative pivot tables or cube formulas, but if you have gone that far, then you might as well jump to Power BI and save yourself a lot of agony.
Say your data is in a table like this. We want to investigate key influencers (from dimensions) of “Salary” column. This data is in a table named data.
Step 2: Calculate and sort influences
Now that we know our objective, let’s go ahead and crunch some numbers.
First, generate a list of all influences. This step is a bit manual, but not too hard. You can use Power Query to automate it if it gets too much.
We get something like this:
As indicated above, we need to calculate two kinds of averages.
- average of each column=criteria
- average of each column<>criteria
This is easily done by a couple of AVERAGEIFS formulas.
For example,
=AVERAGEIFS(data[salary], data[Dept], "Accounting")
for "Accounting" average pay.
=AVERAGEIFS(data[salary], data[Dept], "<>Accounting")
for all departments except "Accounting"
Let’s be smart then..,
Instead of writing formulas with manual criteria, we can tweak the column (data[Dept] for ex.) on the fly. After all, we know the column name.
So, let’s use this.
=AVERAGEIFS(data[Salary],INDEX(data,,MATCH(L5,data[#Headers],0)),M5)So what does it do? This formula calculates average of data[Salary] where M5 (Accounting for ex.) is found in the column that has the same header as L5 (Dept).
This is a powerful and elegant use of INDEX formula. Read this page if your INDEX() finger is weak.
Adding other calculations
Now that we have both averages, we can calculate the influence of something like this:
- Influence = average of criteria / average of not criteria – 1
- Order (rank) of influence = Individual influence’s rank in all influences
We can use simple arithmetic for 1 and RANK.AVG() for 2.
(Picture A) Summary of all the calculations so far…
Step 3: Start making the chart then…
Now that everything is ready, go to Insert ribbon and add Key Influencer chart.
Of course I’m kidding. There is no such button. But you can insert a 3D donut chart. Or may be not.
So let’s move on then.
The Key Influencer chart demo’d at the start is actually a scatter plot. See below anatomy.
10 Steps for creating the chart
(1) Make a scatter plot from “more by” and “influence order” columns
Select columns 3 & 4 as shown in Picture A and insert scatter plot. We get something like this.
(2) Reverse the chart by changing Y (vertical) axis order
Just select the Y (vertical) axis and go to axis format settings (CTRL+1 shortcut). Now select “Values in reverse order” option.
We get this.
(3) Limit vertical axis from 0 to 8
The scatter plot is showing all influences. We don’t need to see everything. So let’s limit the chart to top 8 influences. To do that, simply enter axis limits as 0 and 8.5 (if you put 8, then the last point will be hugging bottom border of chart and makes it hard to read).
You will end up with this.
(4) Replace dots with bubble
Now draw a bubble shape in the spreadsheet. Copy it (Ctrl+C). Select the dots in the chart and hit paste (CTRL+V). We get nice bubbles instead of dots in the chart. See this quick tut to understand the concept.
(5) Add data labels
Select the bubbles and add data labels. Show either X value or calculated labels from cells. Center align and adjust font settings if needed. At this point our key influencer chart looks like this:
(6) Add a dummy series with values just 1 or 2% less than influence
Now that our bubbles are ready, we need to show an arrow from 0 to the influence amount. To do this, we will use error bars, specifically 100% negative x error bars. Try saying that three times in a row.
This is easy to get. Simply add a new column to the calculations area. Write =influence – 2% and you get “Dummy for arrows” column.
Add this column to the chart. Remember, the Y values will be same as “Influence order” (Column 4 in Picture A)
(7) Add 100% negative x-error bars to the dummy series and format them
Wait a second. You can’t simply do that. So just add error bars and then,
- Remove vertical (Y) error bars
- Select horizontal (X) error bars
- Format them (CTRL+1 shortcut)
- Set bar direction to “Minus”
- Error amount to Percentage, 100%
- And end style to “No cap”
We end up with this chart.
While you are at error bar formatting screen, also adjust the bar color and begin arrow type so we get this nice arrowed error bars.
(8) Add another dummy series at -20% for axis labels
We know that top influencer increases average salary by 8.8%, but we don’t know what that is. Time to fix the problem.
Let’s create our own axis labels. Start by adding a dummy column with =-20% in the calculations area.
Also, create the label we want (this can be column & ” is ” & criteria or something else).
You need data like this.
Once that is ready, add a new series to the chart (from Select Data screen) and set X as “Dummy x for axis label” and Y as Influence Order (column 4 in picture A).
At this stage, our key influencer visual looks like this:
(9) Add the labels
Select this new dummy series, add data labels to it. Change label settings so that you can get values from cells (works only Excel 2013 or above). Point to the cells with calculated axis labels.
When everything is set up and formatted, we will have this chart:
(10) Nearly there, just clean up and format the chart
Can you feel the rush of creating something beautiful, fun and interesting in Excel? We are almost done. Just clean up the chart. Remove markers from any dummy series that are not needed. Get rid of grid lines. Add background if you want. Color things and our key influencer chart in Excel is ready.
Final touches – Form control to see positive and negative influences
Of course, the chart is nearly done. But if you want, you can dynamically show either positive or negative influencers. To do that, simply multiply the “More by” column (Column 3 in Picture A) with +1 or -1. +1 for positive influence, -1 for negative. Everything else works just as expected. You can link this to a form control and you will have a dynamic influencers chart.
Key Influencer Chart in Excel – Video tutorial
As this is a fairly complex chart, I made a video tutorial explaining all the nuts and bolts. Watch it if you need a hand with the construction.
You can also see this is on my YouTube channel.
Download Key Influencers Chart template
Click here to download the key influencer chart template.
This file contains detailed instructions, sample data and calculations. Use it to learn or modify for your needs.
What next?
If this is the first time you made a complex Excel chart, pat yourself on the back, go for an extra round of your favorite beverage and hug your loved ones.
And oh yeah, continue the journey with these other examples. You will be richly rewarded.
Budget vs. Actual Chart Sixty sports in 6 charts Dynamic chart in Excel Commonwealth games in a chart Interactive pareto chart Salary increases in scatter plot
How do you like the Key Influencer Chart?
I love the original thing in Power BI. Faking (recreating) it in Excel was fun but not scalable for large or split out data sets. I enjoyed the process immensely and immediately wanted to share it with all.
What about you? How do you like the key influencers chart in Excel? Share your thoughts in the comments section.
33 Responses to “Show Months & Years in Charts without Cluttering”
Very CooOOOoool 🙂
Would it work if I merely change the display format for the dates, or do they actually need to be retyped in that format (Nov, Dec, etc)?
ps- it's only about 34 donuts per month, or slightly more than 1 per day. Yum!
To make it work automatically when you create a chart, delete the labels above the Year and Month columns, but keep the label above the Y data (Donuts). The blank cells tell Excel that the first row and first two columns (indicated by the blanks) are special, so it uses the first row for series names an the first two columns for X axis labels.
This is better than the other kind of donut chart, but you'll soon be carrying a big donut around your midsection.
First off, thank you Chandoo for being respectful and taking out the "Jesus" comment. Not that I'd threaten to kill you, or start world-wide riots, or make you go into hiding if you didn't (as OTHERS would; wink, wink, nudge, nudge)... I just really appreciate your respectulness and consideration; so thank you. I was meaning to write you about it, but when I came to your site you'd already made the edit... so again, thank you!
Secondly, I wanna say I think there's an easier way to do what you are demonstrating. I've got a pivot chart with months of data and all I had to do was right-click the x axis and then select "format axis", under "Axis Options" there's a check-box that says "Multi-level Category Labels". The chart I was able to do this on was a pivotchart however so maybe it wouldn't be that easy for a non-pivotchart.
Anyway, love the site. Keep up the good work. Thanks also for being so open about your success, it's very encouraging and motivating.
God (aka Jesus) Bless. 🙂
Hi Chandoo - great site! Another option to save space is to simply rotate the orientation of the text by 90 degrees, so the dates read vertical rather than horizontal. However, I like the elegance of your solution also.
Hey Chandoo -- Great tip. Only yesterday I was working through some strange behaviour with formatting dates in PivotCharts. Seems the axes never want to cooperate. This is a neat and elegant solution I hadn't thought of using. May need to abandon pivotcharts to use formulas like that, but if we use dynamic named ranges, no big sacrifice.
BTW, whatever did you do to get your site blocked in China? Never heard of regime change by a grass-root spreadsheet movement. Maybe your ISP is hosting some problem sites. Chandoo.org is certainly worth it for me to fire up the VPN, but I'm sure you would lose a lot of other visitors from the middle kingdom.
Chandoo ... pls help.. the link is blocked over here... pls can you put the regular link... 🙂
@JP... Excel Axis formatting is linked to cell formatting by default. So you can just have the dates which are formatted to look like months (mmm).
@Erin: It was not my intention to mock anyone's faith or religion. I just used the word as it is quite common. I decided to remove it as I got 2 emails from readers requesting for the same.
Also, the pivot charts take pivot table groupings by default, so you need not do any of the above while making charts from pivot tables.
@Kein: I am not sure why Chinese authorities decided to block my site. I wish they would actually look at the content instead of blocking sites based on simple text matching rules.
@Kapil: The file is mirrored here: http://chandoo.org/img/d/date-axis-months-years-trick.xls
Cool, really cool...
Nice one Chandoo,
Also would like to mention abt useful method while creating dynamic charts.
In any chart where in the months keep on adding - instead of changing the range for the chart every time we add a month, we can actually format the months as dates (probably 1st of every month) still keep the format as "mmm" AND while selecting the data, we can select a huge rows (date column) once and for all, and the chart adjusts automatically with the data that we entered. So next month when I enter Dec's data, I need not change the source data of the chart, however it automatically adjusts.
Hope I made sense.!
Regards,
SS
Thanks, Chandoo! This is a great tip - one that I will definitely put to use. I typically have an axis with mmm yy format, aligned vertically, but this will definitely look a bit cleaner (except in cases where the chart is too small for the axis labels to be displayed horizontally, even without the mmm yy on one line). Thanks again!
Tom
Chandoo,
Thank you for the posts you are very diligent not to mention very helpful. I would like to know how to get the separation lines on the axis? For example your candy sales chart has longer lines separating east and west how do you format that?
Thanks for being very awesome!
-Josh
Hi Chandoo, we can look the formulas because there is a message:"Unsupported features".
Could you send a diferent Link ?
Thanks.
@SS But what if you've got formulas in the data block (i.e where you would enter static data for the month of december)? My chart now shows #N/A #N/A in the axis with no data for all future dates.
Chandoo, I've got a dynamic range set up showing #N/A errors for future dates. The MMM-DD date format format in row works fine, but when I use YYYY and MMM in two rows, the axis shows #N/A #N/A for all future dates with no data. How would you go about keeping those future months hidden?
Matt -
In order for the axis to automatically extend to the dates within the range and ignore #N/A at the end, you need a date-scale axis, and for this you need to use one column with the complete date, not two columns with year and month.
If you want to use two columns, you need to generate Names in the worksheet which define ranges only as long as the number of months. I have a review of dynamic chart approaches in http://peltiertech.com/WordPress/dynamic-chart-review/ and a whole category on my blog at http://peltiertech.com/WordPress/category/dynamic-charts/. Chandoo also has examples of his own on this site.
How do you make a dynamic chart out of this?
I can't get the axis labels range right.
I tried something like this:
=OFFSET(REPORT!$H$10:$I$10;0;0;COUNTA(REPORT!$H$10:$I$100);1)
Any idea?
Ethan -
Your offset formula defines a range 1 row in size, but the technique here requires 2 rows. Your definition should end with
;2)
instead of
;1)
Thanks Jon,
Got it working now
Great! Now, is there any way to do this directly in Powerpoint? I don't like having linked excel files, so I create the graphs right inside Powerpoint, any way to do this there? I tried and was unsuccessful.
Thanks.
Cool tip Chandoo......thanks
[...] extract year and month from dates to avoid a mess in our stock chart. Chandoo has a great post: Show Months & Years in Charts without ClutteringIn cell B2:=YEAR(D2)In cell B3:=IF(YEAR(D3)=YEAR(D2), "", YEAR(D3))Cell C2:=IF(TEXT(D2, [...]
Hi there,
I have got a data ranging for 3 years. I want to show a chart which shows Jan of 2011, 2012 and 2013 together side by side; then Feb11, Feb12 and Feb13 side by side, then Mar11, Mar12 and Mar13, and so on until December.
Please help. Thanks.
@Bilal
Do you want a number of charts next to each other as separate charts or the data next to each other in a single chart?
What type of chart were you thinking about?
Can you post your data for us to review?
Refer upload instructions at: http://chandoo.org/forum/threads/posting-a-sample-workbook.451/
Hi there
Very good solution this. I have another question on it, though. How do you format the X-axis with monthly gaps (ie, with labels "Jan 2012", "Apr", "Jul", "Oct", "Jan 2013", "Mar", etc), when you're dealing with a data series with weekly or daily data points? The Axis Options dialogue box doesn't appear to offer "Date axis" as an option under the "Axis Type" section.
I've managed to do it in one case with weekly data by setting the interval between tick marks at 13 -- the approximate number of weeks in a quarter -- to get 3-month intervals. But this wouldn't work if I wanted to show 1-month intervals, or had a more detailed daily data series to work with.
Any luck getting the dates to work on a scatter graph? I'm only getting numbers. Works fine on line graphs though.
How can we do the vice versa? i.e. on the x-axis showing year on the level 1, and months on level 2.
I wanted to build these kind of axis labels for 5 years, with year on top and months at the bottom, but it should form in such a way that the seperating lines should seperate the entire data set only at December of each year, and no lines in between any month.
@Apoorve
Just re-arrange the columns
You need to put a space in all cells where you don't want a year
See the attached file
http://chandoo.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Chart-for-Apoorve.xlsx
Unfortunately you don't get any control over lines its all or nothing.
Hello - the link seems to be broken:
http://cid-b663e096d6c08c74.office.live.com/view.aspx/Public/date-axis-months-years-trick.xls
Regards.
Like!!
Three times already today I have used this website and saved a ton of work time in researching excel tricks.
Suggestion: Why not have a "like" or "this article was useful to me" button. That way you can see what is most useful by your users and maybe generate more content based on those "likes".
Just saying. Thanks again and you're doing a great job!
Thanks for the tip. However, I couldn't download your file. The link is broken.
Thank You for taking the time to post this tip. I hope that you have a blessed day.
The link does not work properly and I'm not sure how to actually get the graph to display like this, its frustrating me a tonne. I cant work out what to google either to find an answer elsewhere! 🙁
Is this possible with waterfall chart. Data hereunder -
Years Abbrevation Amt
2020 BEG 2,006
REV 1,950
EMP 1,058
DM (3,244)
OOE 1,078
OPMT 182
AB (638)
END 2,392
2021 REV 8,534
EMP 67
DM (2,142)
OOE (3,120)
OPMT 510
AB 1,008
END 7,249