We all know that networkdays() an extremely powerful and simple excel formula can help you calculate no. of working days between 2 given dates.
But there is one problem with it. It assumes 5 day workweek starting with Monday to Friday. Not all countries have workweek from Monday to Friday. As Incubus wrote to me in an e-mail,
In Excel, the function “networkdays” doesn’t work for users in the middle east ‘cos it counts Saturday & Sunday as weekend. This is good enough only if you live in elsewhere, but for us weekend is Friday & Saturday.
This got me thinking and I ended up writing a user defined formula (UDF) to calculate working days between 2 given dates with any criteria. This will be good for calculating payrolls for temporary workers, offshore partners and of course people working countries where Saturday or Sunday or not usually holidays.
Please download the NetWorkingDays Add-in if you want to use this function.
If you are curious what is inside, see the UDF code
How to use the NetWorkingDays() UDF?
Once you download the add-in, just install the add-in by,
- [in Excel 2003] By going to Tools > Addins > Browse
- [in Excel 2007] By going to Office Button > Excel Options > Addins > “Go button” > Browse
- Specify the location where you saved the downloaded file
Now that the add-in is installed, you can use the UDF by writing a formula like this:
=networkingdays("01-06-2009","02-07-2019","12356")
The first argument is start date, the second one is end date and third one tells which days of week are working (Monday is 1 and Sunday is 7). So the above formula counts all the Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays between 01-06-2009 and 02-07-2019
Known Errors and Limitations
The formula returns #VALUE! error when you try really long durations (like trying to find all the workingdays between now and a century later)
Another thing is, you cannot feed a custom holiday list to this formula. But that is very easy to add on, so I didn’t bother.
So go ahead and give it a try
Download the NetWorkingDays() UDF Excel Add-in
and tell me what you think…
On dates and times in Excel: Date & Time Formulas | 10 Tips on Using Dates & Times in Excel
15 Responses to “Make a Bubble Chart in Excel [15 second tutorial]”
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!
Whyyyyyyyy?
The idea is to tell how to make a bubble chart. I got an e-mail from a reader recently asking how the scatter bubble is made. So I thought a 15 second tutorial would be a good idea to show this.
Did that email go "Dear Chandoo, I know that you scorn bubble charts, but if I don't do one in Excel for my boss then he'll fire my sorry ass, and my children will have to be sold for medical experiments in order for me to be able to afford the upgrade path to Excel 2010"?
If so, fair enough...it's all in the greater good 😉
Chandoo,
I am using excel 2003 and it is not working. The x axis is not the one that I enter in x axis column. Please help! Thanks.
Sorry, after few attempts, I managed to get the right result. I shouldn't select the title (header) of the table and select only the data to produce the right bubble chart.
What's wrong with bubble charts? Is there a better method for displaying scatter plots with lots of overlapping data points? Don't tell me you'd rather jitter!
@Sanwijay: Cool.
@Precious Roy: There is nothing wrong with bubble charts. Infact, it is the only way to show 3 dimensional data (x,y and sizes) without confusing your audience. Jeff is worried that people might misuse the chart. As with any chart, bubbles also have a place and time for using them.
I recommend using bubble charts to show relative performance various products in several regions and similar situations.
Also, human eye is notorious in wrongly estimating the bubble sizes (as we have to measure areas). See http://chandoo.org/wp/2009/07/28/charting-lessons-from-optical-illusions/
We can partially improve bubble charts by adding data labels, but if you have too many bubbles, the labels will clutter the chart and make it look busy.
I can't seem to find a way to plot more than ten bubbles on a chart and need to know how to add more
@KW.. why would such a thing happen. I am sure you can add more bubbles that that. Can you tell us exactly what you are doing...
Example table:
A B C (size)
Me: 25 30 15%
Him: 30 22 11%
Her: 12 30 20%
I am trying to make a bubble chart where the Y axis is A, the X axis is B, and the size of the bubble is C. There should be only 3 bubbles. I keep ending up with six (with the labels being only "Me" and "Her"). My goal is to have three bubbles, one representing each person. Clearly I am doing something wrong. Can you help explain...?
Hi,
I wanted to add data labels to the bubbles. Each bubble represents a different company name. Excel allows me to add the size, legend, x axis values and y axis values. How do I add instead- Company A, B, C, D for the bubbles?
youon you have to choice every data for every company..
ex:create bubble for A company,after that click right> add data label> adjust data labels :format data labels and choose : series name.
i hop u will succeed .
[...] we create a bubble chart with 2 bubbles. 1 for the actual mustache & 1 for target [...]
If we want bubble size to be controlled by one column, but the bubble labels to be controlled by another column, how can this be achieved?
many thanks!!!!