Everyone likes to be in control. Even my 2 year old daughter jumps with joy when she lays her hands on TV remote. She pushes the buttons and assumes it is working. It is another story that we rarely watch TV at home.
By adding an element of control, we can make our dashboard reports fun. Interactive elements like form controls, slicers etc. invite users to play with your dashboard, get involved and understand data by asking questions. That is why I recommend making dashboards interactive.
Today lets understand how you can make dashboards interactive.
There are 2 aspects to interactivity:
- What users see (controls, slicers etc.)
- How it works in background (formulas, pivots, tables etc.)
Section 1: Adding interactivity to your dashboards
There are many techniques to add interactivity to your dashboards. Lets look at each of them closely.
Using Data Validation to add drop-downs to a cell
This is the easiest way to get started. Using data validation feature in Excel, we can restrict only a set of values in a cell. When you do this, Excel shows a small drop down box (combo-box) inside the cell so that you can pick one of the possible values. Like this:
Demo of what you can do:
An example report show casing flu trends in US, various states & cities between 2003 – 2009. For more, click here.
Learn how to use data validation drop-downs:
- Adding data validation drop downs in Excel – Introduction & Examples
- Cascading Drop downs – load values in 2nd list depending first list
- Making data validation list dynamic
Example Dashboards with data validation drop downs
- Flu trends dashboard in Excel
- Visualizing Survey Results using Panel Charts
- Sales Analysis charts in Excel – lots of examples
- Personal Expense Trackers
- Sales Dashboards – lots of examples
- Excel Salary Survey – Dashboards – lots or examples
Using Form Controls to add interactivity
Almost all computer users are familiar with form controls. We see them every day – scroll bars, check boxes, option buttons, buttons – pretty much all programs in your computer are ripe with form controls. But do you know you can add the same controls to your Excel worksheet?
You can use these controls on worksheets to help select data. For example, drop-down boxes, list boxes, spinners, and scroll bars are useful for selecting items from a list. Option Buttons and Check Boxes allow selection of various options. Buttons allow execution of VBA code.
By adding a control to a worksheet and linking it to a cell, you can return a numeric value for the current position of the control. You can use that numeric value in conjunction with the Offset, Index or other worksheet functions to return values from lists.
Demo of what you can do:
[Watch the demo on our YouTube channel]
Learn how to use form controls
- Introduction to various form controls & Examples
- Using check boxes with charts – example & tutorial
- Using scroll bar control – simple mortgage payment calculator in Excel
Example dashboards using form controls
- KPI Dashboards using Excel
- Customer Service Dashboard in Excel
- Excel Salary Survey Dashboards – lots of examples
- Sales Dashboards in Excel – lots of examples
Using Slicers to add interactivity
Slicers, a new feature added in Excel 2010 can be used to add interactivity to your dashboards & reports. Slicers are like visual filters. So you can see all available options as small boxes and you can click which option you want.
Demo of Slicers in action:
Learn how to use Slicers
- Using slicers to make a dynamic dashboard in Excel
- Overview of slicers & other new features in Excel 2010
- Using slicers to select one of many scenarios in your models
Example Dashboards using Slicers
Using Click-able cells as interactive elements
With a few lines of VBA code, you can turn every cell in Excel in to a potential input option. When user clicks on a particular cell, you can treat that as interaction and modify your dashboard (or chart). This is a very powerful and intuitive way to use in dashboards. See below example.
Demo of what you can do:
Learn how to use click-able cells
Example dashboards using click-able cells type of interactivity
- Interactive sales chart in Excel
- Displaying product reviews on demand
- Grammy bump chart in Excel
- Customer service dashboard in Excel
- Excel Salary Survey Dashboards – lots of examples
Using Hyperlinks to add interactivity
Many of you know that you can type any text in a cell and press CTRL+K to convert it to a hyperlink to another part in your workbook. But Hyperlinks can trigger macros upon mouse hover. This is a powerful technique first mentioned by Jordan at OptionExplicitVBA.
By using this behavior, we can create an interactive report that gets updated upon mouse hover. See this demo:
Demo of what you can do:
Learn how to set up dynamic hyperlinks
- Interactive dashboards using Excel Hyperlinks – tutorial & explanation
- Video tutorial on Interactive hyperlinks
- Excel hyperlinks – basics, syntax & more
Example dashboards using interactive hyperlinks
- Excel Salary Survey Dashboards – lots of examples
- Periodic table of elements in Excel [Option Explicit VBA]
Using VBA / Macros to add interactivity
Of course, you can add active x or VBA events to add interactivity to your dashboards. This gives you lot of control on what you want and enables you to do more. That said, using VBA to provide interactivity requires that your audience must enable macros when they view your work.
There are many ways to add interactivity thru VBA. Some popular methods are,
- Adding buttons or assigning macros to drawing shapes, images
- Overlapping buttons or shapes on maps, floor plans etc. and driving events on click
- Using worksheet or active-x controls and adding events (like mouseover, click etc.)
Note: Both click-able cells & interactive hyperlinks also require VBA to be enabled. But the amount of code they require is quite less.
Demo of what you can do
Learn how to use VBA & Macros to add interactivity
- Introduction to VBA, Excel Macros
- Using VBA Macros to make a picture calendar
- Dynamic Pivot Chart using VBA Macros
Example Dashboards using VBA Macro based interactivity
- MLB Pitching Statistics Dashboard
- India’s world cup cricket victory in a dashboard
- Interactive Sales chart using Excel
- Sales analysis charts in Excel – multiple examples
- Excel Salary Survey dashboards – multiple examples
- Visualizing Roger Federer’s Wimbledon victory – Excel VBA Dashboard
Using Timelines to add interactivity [Excel 2013]
Starting Excel 2013, Microsoft is introducing a new feature called as Time lines. Timelines allow you to interactively select a range of dates. I have not yet written any articles on this feature. But here is a short demo on how they work:
Section 2: Behind interactivity – What you need to know in Excel
Now that you know various techniques for interactivity, lets understand various building blocks that help you get there.
Use tables to hold your data
One of the premises of interactivity is that your data can change. When this is the case, I suggest you to set up all your data in tables. Tables allow you to keep data that can grow (or shrink) and write formulas referring to whole range.
Learn how to use tables [Excel 2007 and above only]
Use INDEX formula
INDEX formula helps you extract a portion (single cell, range) from a list of values that you want to use for further calculations or charting. The syntax is simple.
INDEX(range of values, row, column)
Example: INDEX(A1:A10,5) returns A5
Note: Index returns a reference to A5, not the value itself. So you can use INDEX where ranges are expected. For ex. INDEX(A1:A10,5) : INDEX(A1:A10,9) same as A5:A9
Fore more on INDEX formula:
PS: You can also use OFFSET formula in this situations. Please keep in mind that OFFSET is volatile and hence can slow down your workbooks if you use it alot.
Use lookup formulas
Interactive dashboards require formulas that dynamically lookup a set of values among heaps and return them to charts, summaries etc. This is where lookup formulas come handy. Check out our LOOKUP page for comprehensive information on this.
Use SUMIFS, SUMPRODUCT
SUMIFS & SUMPRODUCT formulas will become your best friends when it comes to extracting summaries from mountains of data based on user interaction. Once you master these, you can analyze & visualize any amount of data with ease.
- Introduction to SUMIFS formula, examples & explanation
- Introduction to SUMPRODUCT formula, examples & explanation
- Formula Forensics 007 – Sumproduct
- Advanced SUMPRODUCT examples
- More on SUMPRODUCT, SUMIFS, COUNTIFS, SUMIF, Array formulas
Use Picture links
Picture links are live snapshots of ranges of cells. If you create a picture link from cells A1:D5, then although it looks like a picture, it is a live image of the cells A1:D5. So when the cells change, the picture gets updated too, thus creating interactive effect.
For more on picture links:
- Introduction to picture links – examples, information & uses
- Picture links in practice – example dashboards & charts
Use Pivot tables
Pivot tables can process large volumes of data and give you desired summaries with in split seconds. They are by nature not dynamic (if data or criteria changes, you need to refresh them). Starting Excel 2010, you can use Slicers to interactively update pivot tables (hence pivot charts) . Even in earlier versions, you can use simple macros to automatically refresh pivot tables whenever users modify a form control or do something else. This allows for powerful dashboard reporting all the while keeping your calculation engine light weight.
For more on pivot tables:
Use conditional formatting
Conditional formatting plays an important role in interactive dashboards by highlighted changed portions of worksheet. This further improves the interactive feel and guides users attention.
More on conditional formatting:
Do you make your dashboards interactive?
I love keeping my workbooks, models & dashboards interactive. Simple features like form controls, slicers can add a lot of wow factor to your workbooks.
What about you? Do you make interactive dashboards & charts? What are your favorite techniques? Please share using comments.
Now, if you excuse me, I will go and resolve a fight between my daughter and son. They both want remote control the TV even though it is switched off.
More on Dashboards: Check out Excel Dashboards page & resources for making dashboards page.
28 Responses to “FIFA Worldcup 2018 Excel Tracker – FREE Download”
Good work as always - I liked the way you did the "menu" on the left hand side (although the buttons aren't lined up between tabs if I'm being ultra picky)
Have you previously written about the method of extracting the Wikipedia page into Power Query? It's not something I recall seeing before.
ps other geeky observsations:
- the bracket columns are too narrow for the date & match number - and will need to be wider still when the team names get populated
- match 51 should be Moscow (Luzhniki) for consistency
- it's not possible to be 23 hours ahead of GMT - the International Dateline gets in the way! I think the maximum is 14. There are also a couple of countries who work to a quarter hour to make it really complicated!
- There's a typo in the how-to - "compated" instead of compared
Thanks for the lovely feedback. I have fixed almost all of them.
1) button alignment: this is tricky as row heights can change between sheets.
2) Column width is fixed now so bracket view looks better
3) Updated the stadium name
4) Did not bother with the 23 hours ahead thingie. This is more of a novelty feature 😛
5) Fixed the type
6) Fixed an issue with live score table. This should work as long as the points table is maintained in wikipedia page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_FIFA_World_Cup
7) I have not discussed the technique of reading all tables on webpage to one big table. Watch out for a blog post on this soon.
Button alignment is one for the ultra-OCD sufferers 😉 There are ways, but only for those with too much time on their hands.
Aah, Excel. The perfect tool for people like us. Everything (cells) is in same shape and size by default and aligned perfectly. 😀
Is there actually a way to copy row heights (in the same way you copy column widths?)
By the way Chandoo, great post. I'm forwarding to my department. I actually use another query from the same page to automatically fill in the team names for the knock-out stages (I made one for round of 16 which I then duplicated and edited for quarter-finals etc.) This is incredible, I was always wondering how to do these type of queries from the web, and now I know 🙂
Hello!
This is quite amazing and incredibly cool to use 🙂
Testing the constraints of this sheets a few errors popped I noticed:
- Vlookup Group E-H refers to column J instead of E (eg. Brazil gets the same points as Russia because the formula looks up Russia twice)
- Power query only has 29 lines, the overview of has 32 but the 3 countries from group A are lost as the overview is refreshed - causing N/A in the group stage colums
@Jake.. thank you. I am sorry for the errors. I could not test the live points table until the games began. I see my folly now. I have fixed both issues and uploaded a new file. As the points table relies on a wikipedia page, if someone decides to change the layout or rename a column it can seriously harm this template. I took some precautions in the Power Query layer to adjust column names dynamically etc, but it is not foolproof.
Try downloading the newer version and let me know if you see something funny.
No worries!
Was able to fix the vlookup myself but the power query had me bit stumped 🙂 And wanted to give you a heads-up to everyone can enjoy it!
Thanks for the awesome sheet!
Hi,
Thanks for sharing this world cup tracker. Certainly makes it more interesting when the data is current. As a newbie, it also helps to have a couple of mistakes to find whether unintentional or not.
Thanks again
Hi,
Your v-lookups in the "Group Stage" tab for groups E, F, G, and H (all the ones under column O) are pointing to the wrong country. They all point to column J, so whatever happens to the countries in column J will also be reflected for the countries in the groups in column O for that same row.
Just thought I'd call that out. Thanks for the great work on this!
@Christian... Thanks for trying this and letting me know about lookups. I have fixed the issue now. Please download latest version for that and few more fixes.
Refresh All did not work correctly. Team names vanished though points were updated.
@Sheeloo... Can you please try with latest version (download again using above links). I tested up to latest Iran's stunning win over Morocco and it works.
Dear Chandoo
Thanks a lot for this worksheet.
However, while refreshing the data, I am getting error message as "Initialisation of Data Source failed".
May I know what version of Excel you are using? Do you have internet connectivity? If you are familiar with Power Query, try tracing the steps in the query editor. And oh, first start with the latest version of file (link above).
@Etienne - yes. Copy row, paste formats will do it, although obviously that will bring the formats of every cell in the row as well as the height.
Latest version seems to be working well.
One request: the Groups & Points tables on the Group Stage sheet have the team names pre-entered. This means they don't get sorted according to the results.
On my copy, I've changed them to a lookup, so they appear in the same order as the points table. It would be good if you can do the same if/when you release a new update!
Here's what I did. It's not the most elegant, but it works, and I didn't have much time to spend on it!
Using helper values of 1,2,3,4 in columns I and N for each group, the formula for the first team name in group A (cell J4) is:
=INDEX(points[Team],MATCH(OFFSET(J4,-(I4),0),points[Group],0)+(I4-1))
This can be copied & pasted to the other team name cells.
Cheers!
Good suggestion. I have made changes to the points table to remove lookups and just show teams in the order they appear in the detailed table. This way, You will see top two teams on first two rows. We could highlight them as well (figured this would make it look like a bowl of M&Ms, so didn't bother) or highlight *YOUR* team.
I consider my Excel skills as above average but far from guru and I love how your little projects like this get me to look at data in a new way. I would like to expand on the data in the points table through the use of some calculations but I am a little challenged by the data coming across as text. The Pts column is easy to deal with, but I'm having problems with the GD. The negative goal differential looks like it may be noted with an en dash instead of a minus sign, but if I search for an en dash in the data Excel doesn't find any. I would like to include conversion to a minus sign in my little macro so I can get everything to numbers but so far I am not having any luck. Any thoughts? Thanks for your help.
Thanks for such kind words 🙂
I suggest adding an extra step in Power Query to convert points, GD & other columns to numbers. You can replace em dash in PQ. I did not do it as this will add another layer of dependency and should the wikipedia page change, one more reason for the query to fail.
As always, an awesome spreadsheet from Chandoo. I love the Power Query score update without macros. The country watch-out is a unique feature as well!
For those who like a predictor template with flag lookup and a ribbon UI, here is our spreadsheet:
https://www.spreadsheet1.com/fifa-world-cup-2018-russia-free-prediction-templates-for-excel.html
Here is our World Cup 2022 template with LAMBDA functions:
https://www.spreadsheet1.com/fifa-world-cup-2022-qatar-free-prediction-templates-for-excel.html
[…] Interesting World Cup Tracker here at chandoo.org : https://chandoo.org/wp/fifa-worldcup-2018-tracker/ […]
Great template!
I came across another one with image vlookups for country flags
https://eexcel.co.uk/downloads (World_Cup_2018_Sweepstake.xlsx)
This is a great Template.
I am running Excel 2010 with the PowerQuery add-in running.
The scores will not update, so I followed the error and the second operation (Fitlered rows) says that the table is empty.
After a few minutes on Wikipedia, I realise that my PowerQuery skills are not good enough to work out what the issue is.
Any suggestions?
I would like to fix it myself is possible.
Thanks,
Sean.
@Sean... Can you try the latest version mate? I think it should work.
Where can I see the results for a specific match?
Thanks!
@Juan... You can now. I have included a results tab that shows match scores. This too is a live table. Just refresh data to get new results. Please download latest version file from links above to use this feature.
PS: There is another version coming soon with all goals too. I just have to spend some more time polishing the Json to table Power Query thingie.