My polar clock using donut charts in excel started a conversation and readers have been awesome enough to download the excel and create their own clocks to show time. Even though the idea of this blog is share the little that I know with you, it is amazing how much I have learned from you all. It just emphasizes that what ever you give away will come back to you in better shape.
So here are few ideas the readers have shared with me through mail / comments.
The polar chart with animation effect
Reader darone commented that he created a macro to hit “f9” repetitively thus creating the animation effect. My friend Jon took it a step further created the animation using some nifty VBA and shared the spreadsheet here. Download and play with it to learn how to run a function periodically using VBA. The key part of the code is:
Application.OnTime Now + TimeValue("0:0:1"), Me.CodeName & "." & "doThis"
The above line would tell MS-Office to run doThis after 1 second from NOW. If you include this line in the code of doThis() then every time it runs, it tells windows to relaunch the function after one second. Very neat and effective way to reduce processor overload that darone faced.
Also read Jon’s comments on the original polar clock post at time is on my side.
Swiss designer Chromachron clock using Pie charts in Excel
Robert, another avid reader and an excel guru liked the polar clock idea and thought why not create the famous chromachron clock in excel. For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, chromachron is a clock that tells time on a color-time-circle.
On a chronometer time is shown by hands and numerals. Differently on Chromachron, the color-time-watch: Its face is not a dial but a color-time-circle, over which a black disk revolves with a piece cut out as large as a color segment. The disk revolves with the speed of one color area per hour. The disk cut-out indicates the time.
So Robert took 2 pie charts, one with 12 colors to get the background. Another with 2 colors one black and another transparent to get the rotating disc effect. So when the time 12:00, you can see yellow portion alone, as you move towards 1:00 you will see more orange color. Download and play with Robert’s sheet.
Both these files have VBA on them so you may want to enable it to get the desired results, but they are safe so go crazy 😀
After seeing this two fine examples I had to do one more clock. This time I choose the grid based clock and did it in an excel grid using conditional formatting to fill cells. How did I do it, well that is your home work. Go figure…
Need more clock ideas? Try the procrastinator’s clock or some other idea featured on the 10 creative ways to show time
More on Clocks: Give your time series data a twist, plot around clock
More on Visualization fun: Tag clouds in excel using VBA, Square Pies in Excel, not everything is round, Olympic Medals on a map
24 Responses
I’d suggest simply using the subtotal function and filtering the data using the Win/Loss column. You get the same results and the formula is more comprehensible.
@John
That is one option.
There are times however when you want to see the whole data table or a filtered subset and still want to produce summary reports against an unfiltered field.
Is there a particular reason why you are using a comma and the unary (–) operator for the second array in the SUMPRODUCT formula? It seems to work the same if you were to string the arrays together using the asterisk (*). The advantage is that SUMPRODUCT treats the entire string of arrays as a single array.
@Mathew
Your correct, There is no difference.
I thought it may have been easier to explain this method.
Is there a way to do this on a large set of data? As in ~100,000 rows? When I try I get an error because the formula becomes too long. It says the max length of a formula is 8,192 characters. Excel 2010.
How do I incorporate a specific text within a cell for the second array. For instance, – -(C7:C13=”Apple”)
when I chose a specific text the formula does not work.
@RB
I am not sure what is the issue as if I use the sample data in the post the following work fine
Count:
=SUMPRODUCT(SUBTOTAL(3,OFFSET(C7:C13,ROW(C7:C13)-MIN(ROW(C7:C13)),,1)), –(C7:C13=”L”))
Sum:
=SUMPRODUCT(SUBTOTAL(3,OFFSET(C7:C13,ROW(C7:C13)-MIN(ROW(C7:C13)),,1)),(C7:C13=”L”)*(D7:D13))
You may want to check that there are no leading or trailing spaces in your list of Apples
I should have given a better explanation. Heres my situation. I have a column with cells filled with names like Column 1, Column 2, Pier 1, Pier 2, etc. If the cell just contained Pier and searched for that it works. But because it has other characters in the cell its not recognizing the pier. So how can I extract specific characters of a string of text in this formula?
Hopefully this was a better explanation
Hello-
This formula works pretty well for me except that it slow down excel and prevents some of my macros from working. I was wondering if there was a way to program this in VBA so that excel isn’t always trying to recalculate it. I would like to use a push of a button to get it to run then paste in a cell.
Thanks!
I am trying to sum filtered data in a column, but would want to ignore the negative values in the column. How to go about doing this?
@Akshay
Why not just add a filter to that column to only show the values greater than zero?
The negative values are required for reporting purposes, but their effect on the total is distorting the required output. Please advise.
@Akshay
I’d suggest making a post in the Chandoo.org Forums
http://forum.chandoo.org/
Attach a sample file to simplify the task
I have this working for counting and summing, however, I have a list and for the second array, I need a criteria. That is, I’m looking for b13:b200=”01.??.??” or =left((a1,2) or something like that. These types of criteria matches do not appear to work as I get a blank as a result.
Thanks!
@Bob
As your formula b13:b200=”01.??.??” looks like you are trying to check the first day of the month of the range
What about trying Day(B13:B200)=1
Hai Experts,
i understood this formula well and working fine in MS Excel 2013
but when the same am trying to place in google Spreadsheet it shows error as
“SUMPRODUCT has mismatched range sizes. Expected row count: 1. column count: 1. Actual row count: 2014, column count: 1.” and as a result #VALUE! Appears in cell.
Can anyone please help me how would i get it done in Google Spread sheet
or is there any other formula as a substitute for this.
Thank you very much.
thanks for providing this.. but why does excel keeps on prompting Circular referencing in cell D3?
@Vivek
I don’t know
I just downloaded the file and it is working fine and not showing that error
Goto the Formulas, Calculation Options Tab and check that Calculation is set to Automatic
What version of Excel and Windows are you using ?
I know that this forum is for MS Excel, but I am trying to help someone who is working in Google Sheets. The below formula works in Excel but Google Sheets returns:
“SUMPRODUCT has mismatched range sizes. Expected row count: 1. column count: 1. Actual row count: 39000, column count: 1.” and as a result #VALUE! Appears in cell.
This is the same problem asked by Srichirin above. Does anyone know if there is a formula for Google Sheets that will replicate what MS Excel does?
=SUMPRODUCT(SUBTOTAL(3,OFFSET($C$6:$C$39500,ROW($C$6:$C$39500)-MIN(ROW($C$6:$C$39500)),,1)),- -($C$6:$C$39500=H1),($D$6:$D$39500))
Trying to find a SUMPRODUCT formula that counts the word Closed by date for the last 7 days in a filtered list.
=COUNTIF(M:M,”>”&TODAY()-7) works ok for unfiltered count Column M contains Closure dates (blank if open) and Column L is Status Open or Closed
@ Terry
Please ask the question at the Chandoo.org Forums
https://chandoo.org/forum/
Please attach a sample file to ensure a quicker more accurate answer
I used this formula and worked like a charm! But, now I’ve been requested to use it but adding not one but two criteria in the same formula. For instance the sum I was doing added negative and positive numbers. I’ve been asked to use the exact same formula but adding that only positive numbers were considered… any idea on how to do this?
How exactly do you do sum filtered cells when two criteria are need not just one?
Thank you so much brother literally I have been struggling since morning to get the sum of the filtered category, however, after reading your blog attentively i got my solution, so thanks a lot once again.