Hello everyone. Stop reading further and go fetch your helmet. Because what lies ahead is mind-blowingly awesome.
About a month and half ago, we held our annual dashboard contest. This time the theme is to visualize state to state migration in USA. You can find the contest data-set & details here.
We received 49 outstanding entries for this. Most of the entries are truly inspiring. They are loaded with powerful analysis, stunning visualizations, amazing display of Excel skill and design finesse. It took me almost 2 weeks to process the results and present them here.
But first, let me apologize
Each of our contest participants spent a lot of time crafting their files. But due to unforeseen personal work, I could not set aside time to process the entries until last week of May. I sincerely apologize for taking this much time to showcase the entries.
What about the winners?
This week our panel of judges will be reviewing these 49 entries. Next week we will share short-listed entries for public voting. Once the voting is complete, we will declare the winner. This process should be completed with-in 2 weeks.
How to read this post?
This is a fairly large post. If you are reading this in email or news-reader, it may not look properly. Click here to read it on chandoo.org.
- Each entry is shown in a box with the contestant’s name on top. Entries are shown in alphabetical order of contestant’s name.
- You can see a snapshot of the entry and more thumbnails below.
- The thumb-nails are click-able. So that you can enlarge and see the details.
- You can download the contest entry workbook, see & play with the files.
- You can read my comments at the bottom. The comments are in 2 sections – what is good, what can be improved.
- Please take my comments on “what can be improved” lightly. I do not mean to offend any of the contestants.
- At the bottom of the box, you can find links to the key techniques used. Click on them to learn more.
Thank you
Thank you very much for all the participants in this contest. I have thoroughly enjoyed exploring your work & learned a lot from them. I am sure you had fun creating these too.
So go ahead and enjoy the entries.
PS: We had to disqualify 2-3 entries due to errors in VBA code or inability to open the file.
Migration Dashboard by Aditya Canay
What is good:
- Good colors
- Easy to understand (built in help sheet as well)
- Interactive. Can ask questions & get answers
- Interesting facts & overall summary on top
What can be improved:
- Summary on top is static. It would be better to depend on year or state selected.
- State selection is clumsy. Could have used Active-x combo box or slicer
- Donut chart is not the best choice.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Aditya Srinivaasan
What is good:
- Simple and easy on eyes
- Form controls with auto complete (Active-x combos)
- Added data on Cost of living, Crime rate & Tax rate. Helps understand what may have caused the migration.
What can be improved:
- Missing overall summary or header.
- Logarithmic scale on population breakup chart. Makes it unclear.
- Not sure which year’s data population distribution chart shows.
- Crime rate indexation assume same weightage for all crimes. Could have used a better measure.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Amit Ajmera
What is good:
- Comprehensive dashboard with lots of detail
- Analysis of individual state, comparison with another state and overall trends
- Interactive. Can ask questions & get answers
- Analysis of any year or average of all 3.
- Shows a map of selected state.
What can be improved:
- Could use subtle and better colors. Also apply consistent colors.
- Alignment is off in few places.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Arnaud Duigou
What is good:
- Clickable map to drill down to a state
- Overall statistics vs. Individual state focus
- Interactive. Can ask questions & get answers
- Interesting facts & overall summary on top
- Built-in help bubbles (that can be toggled)
- Analysis on factors for migration (by using additional data like per-capita income, unemployment rate and weather conditions)
What can be improved:
- Not sure how the tool tips button is supposed to work.
- Alignment is off in few places.
- Switching between state view & overall heatmaps seems clumsy. Also, the state selection combo box on top feels redundant
- Colors & fonts can be improved. Feels like too many of them are used.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Biju Chacko
What is good:
- Simple charts with easy to understand colors
- Interactive charts to see migration trends per year
What can be improved:
- Could use a summary on top and few other metrics
- Bar charts have non-zero axis. Creates false impression
- Alignment can be improved. Lots of empty spaces that can be filled with useful insights.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Celso Garcia
What is good:
- Clickable map to drill down to a state
- Color coded map & bar chart for easy interpretation
- Form controls to select year
What can be improved:
- Could use a header with summary statistics
- Map and bar chart represent the same data. Could have used other metrics in the bar chart to give more insights
Techniques used:
Become Awesome in Excel & VBA – Create dashboards like these…
My comments:
- Learn how to create interactive dashboards & reports using Excel
- Develop your own macros & VBA code
- 50+ hours of video training
- Learn at your own pace
- Click here to know more
Migration Dashboard by Cesarino Rua
What is good:
- Map with details on hover!
- Lots of details for selected state, include flag of the state, important cities etc.
What can be improved:
- Some of the tables feel like orphans. Could use titles (and overall summary or title or both)
- The bar chart on right is just repetition of data in the last of column of table before that. Could have used this space for something else.
- Feels like too much data. Need to zoom down to 80% to see everything. Consider using form controls or something else to make it easy on eyes.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Chris Newman
What is good:
- Clear, dashboard style output with details in big fonts.
- Details of migration combined with political tastes of the state.
- Slicers for selecting year
- Good choice of colors, good alignment and layout.
- Built-in help bubbles
What can be improved:
- Poor choice of conditional formatting databar on top. Could have used regular bar chart with 0 axis.
- Giving a choice of additional measures could have added detail to state view.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Daniel Dion
What is good:
- Clickable map to drill down to a state
- Also, slicers to select a state
- Ability to select year, type of metric (leaving, entering, net gain) to view for the selected state.
What can be improved:
- Too many scrollbars. Especially both slicer & clickable map serve the same purpose. So, could have removed the slicer.
- The listing of states & column chart beneath the map are same data. Again this space could have been used for other insights.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by David Hoppe
What is good:
- Map with vectors indicating the movement
- Multiple statistics and ability to switch them (and years)
- Ability to analyze by absolute or relative population
- Slicers for selecting state (or region or division)
- Simple, clean layout with good colors and beautiful presentation
What can be improved:
- Could have added help or instructions
- Could have removed either region or division slicer (as they feel redundant)
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Dwight Johnson
What is good:
- Simple charts with easy to understand colors
- Data validation to select state
What can be improved:
- Could have moved the output to a blank sheet & cleaned it up
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Fakhri Damdi
What is good:
- No comments
What can be improved:
- Could have reduced the formatting and focused on insights
- Feels incomplete and rushed. Could have focused on answering some analytical questions instead of making charts from raw data
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Gangadhar Yeligaty
What is good:
- Simple dashboard with easy to understand layout and charts
- Interactive charts to see migration trends per year
- Scrolling area to see where people move from selected state
- Built-in help
What can be improved:
- Could have added header section with few statistics
- Could have used better formatting for the charts (labels & axis feels heavy)
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Janet
What is good:
- Dual map with ability to analyze by either leaving or entering state
- Ability to focus on various trends (with sortable table, year selection)
- Slicers for selecting year, state, type of sort
- Good choice of colors, good alignment and layout.
What can be improved:
- Sort order slicers are reversed (clicking on Ascending sorts the table in descending)
- Feels like too much data. Could have used 000s or millions notation for population numbers (and removed MoE numbers or have them toggled)
- Could have added help to understand what arrows meant in the last column.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Jean-MarcVoyer
What is good:
- WOW
- Form controls, selectable cells to define analysis
- Good design and colors
- Excellent analysis (with ability to ask a lot of questions and get answers visually
What can be improved:
- Dark background makes it tricky to read numbers. Could have used white or dull background.
- The dashboard is very comprehensive. It could have benefited from help screen.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Jeff Sawers
What is good:
- A very interesting layout and selection mechanism (with slicers for year, region and state)
- Focus on top 10 states with-in selection and where people moved using databars & heat maps
- Good alignment, colors and design.
What can be improved:
- The heatmap section is somewhat tricky to interpret. May be aggregating data at just region level would have made it easy to read.
- A little more analysis or explanation on what may have caused migration would make this even better.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Joey Cherdarchuk
What is good:
- Beautiful and simple design
- Clickable cells for selecting year and state
- Simple colors and attractive maps
What can be improved:
- The labels on bar chart are hard to read. A better color or placement would have benefited.
- If the selected year’s map is highlighted, it would make interpretation of trends faster.
- A quick summary on what may have caused such migration trends would make this dashboard even better
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Jon Schwabish
What is good:
- Simple chart with interactive controls
- Uses the hypothesis that people in poor states move to neighboring states and tests it with the interactive charts & data.
- Good colors and simple design
What can be improved:
- Could have added overall statistics in header
- Could have displayed relevant facts for the selected region or state.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Jorge L
What is good:
- Simple & clear layout with summary on top and state details at bottom. Good colors too
- Interactive controls to select state and year.
What can be improved:
- Selecting state is tricky with data validation. Could have used a slicer or active-x combo box
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Jude Shyju
What is good:
- Data & charts (map or table) in one view with ability to toggle fields & years
- Ability to drill down to a state and visualize inflow or outflow
What can be improved:
- Picture links create clumsy output. Could have used regular charts, tables and drawing shapes instead.
- Lack of alignment in few places.
- Although ability to turn off fields is welcome, it just results in a column with #N/A. Not useful as no space is gained.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Kevin Steiner
What is good:
- Interesting visualization with very tiny cells making up US map, pivot table report filters used for selection
- Choropleth map with Excel cell grid!
- Ability to see the map & full data (as pivot report)
What can be improved:
- The cell grid map, although innovative, does not look perfect. Could have used regular map with a little bit of VBA to color it.
- Instead of presenting all the data in a table (pivot table), could have used charts. This saves space and helps create a better layout.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by krishnakumar
What is good:
- Detailed analysis on regional migration trends (Midwest, northeast, south & west)
- Ability to drill-down to an individual state by selecting year, region and state’s name
- Interesting facts & details about state shown.
What can be improved:
- Regional migration column chart is tricky to read. Could have used a map or diagram for better effect.
- Too long. Requires 2 scrolls to see the full dashboard. Instead could have shrunk or removed a few charts to create a compact report.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by krishnasamymohan
What is good:
- Simple report on state migration
What can be improved:
- Too simple. Could have used some charts or conditional formatting to highlight interesting points
- Year selection does not seem to work.
- Gauge charts a poor choice for visualizing this type of data. Could have used alternatives
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by krishnateja
What is good:
- Interesting layout and state selection mechanism (clickable map)
- Ability to analyze selected state’s migration flows
What can be improved:
- Instead of 4 charts depicting regional trends, one chart with selected region’s trends could be used. This creates space for more analysis.
- In-consistent colors and alignment
- Could have displayed a title & quick summary on top.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Kyle Tan
What is good:
- Interesting presentation with ability to choose a variety of perspectives (destination vs. origin, year, entire USA vs. single state) and various measures for doing correlation analysis.
- Sortable, scrollable chart of state migration flows (with distance from origin!)
- I love the correlation analysis chart. But selecting right measure to analyze feels tedious. Could have pre-calculated or suggested measures based on state selection.
- Good, compact layout.
What can be improved:
- The exploded, grouped pie chart on top feels clumsy and poorly done. Should have used a simple bar chart for top 15 states alone.
- The VBA code feels buggy and sluggish. Could have checked it for errors and disabled screenupdating.
- Could have displayed a title & quick summary on top.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Mark Weber
What is good:
- Superb colors, layout, chart selection and presentation
- Very easy to use with built-in help, lots of buttons to change / show / hide things you want.
- Analysis by state and state-to-state.
- 2 color themes – dark & light version.
- Subtle but powerful use of conditional formatting.
What can be improved:
- Could have added a top section with overall USA statistics.
- The analysis is limited to population numbers alone. Could have added additional metrics for richer analysis.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Matthew Waechter
What is good:
- Beautiful colors and layout. Feels well balanced and easy on eyes.
- Ability to select state & year to understand migration flows. The selection choice feels slick (clickable cells with arrow indicator)
- Interesting ladder / waterfall chart to explain net gains in population.
What can be improved:
- The dot plots on top feel cryptic. Could have added help or title to explain that they are migration numbers for all 50 states.
- The analysis is limited to population numbers alone. Could have added additional metrics for richer analysis.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Michael Bellot
What is good:
- An elegant dashboard with subtle colors, interesting shapes and clever layout
- The clickable map is a very user-friendly way to explore the information.
- Additional metrics like health, education, wealth, crime, climate etc. help explain migration reasons
What can be improved:
- Could have added data labels to the bar charts (or to the map) to make it better.
- The radar chart, although looks pretty, just repeats the data on the shapes. Could have used it for something else.
- A little more clean-up on dashboard sheet is needed. It shows some calculations and data on the right (which could be hidden)
- It is not sure for what year the map & bar chart data is displayed. An year selection mechanism can also be added.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by NA Horansil
What is good:
- Wow, cell grid used to create a giant map of USA. Then conditional formatting is used to highlight state’s cells based on migration numbers.
- Ability to select state & year to understand migration flows.
- Sortable migration trends chart (although in a separate sheet)
What can be improved:
- While the cell-grid map looks neat, could have used a regular map with VBA for color-coding. This provides better fidelity and forces us to focus on numbers rather than technique.
- The work books has 3 sheets with dashboards / charts. Contest rules specify one chart or dashboard. Could have integrated all to one page.
- Could have displayed a title & quick summary on top.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Nathaniel Mahoney
What is good:
- One more cell grid map, this time at zip code level. Looks interesting although stretched.
- Ability to select state & year to analyze migration trends
- Uses pivot tables & additional data.
What can be improved:
- The map gets stretched and looses clarity due to cell grid approach. Could have used a regular map with VBA.
- The dashboard (?) has no title, no additional numbers and has minimal legend. Could have added a title, quick summary and few more charts.
- How the zip code level migration data is obtained is not clear. Could have added instructions & pointed to sources.
- Requires Data > Refresh once selection is made. Could have automated that with VBA.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Nhut Vo
What is good:
- Simple report on state migration
- Ability to select state, year for analyzing migration flows. Ability to sort the list of states based on inflows or outflows.
What can be improved:
- The chart on the right (state-wise distribution) feels busy. Could have shown only top 10 states as sorting is already available.
- The sorting buttons are confusing. Could have used a selection mechanism (or toggle button).
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Niyaz Shaffi
What is good:
- Clean layout with good colors and clear titles
- Slicers for selecting to & from state, year
- Forecast of migration flows
- Choropleth map based on state migration flows
- Ability to expand a chart (and see more data points, although for a poorly executed chart)
What can be improved:
- The radar plots are a poor choice for depicting top 10 states. Should have used bar / column charts
- The migration inflow vs. area bubble chart is not easy to understand. Should have added instructions.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Permana Zainal
What is good:
- Clear, simple layout with bright colors
- A map with bubbles depicting migration trends.
- Ability to analyze by state, year and migration destination
What can be improved:
- The map / bubble chart is confusing with too many colors. Not sure what the state fill colors represent. The bubble colors are also distracting and useless (as the bubble size is what matters). Could have simplified with either Choropleth map or outline map with bubbles.
- The bar charts beneath donuts do not start at zero. This creates wrong impression of the data.
- Summary of total migrants / population chart needs axis labels and ability to sort.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Prashant Sharma
What is good:
- Roll-over selectable map and ability to select year for analysis
- Simple dashboard with state migration analysis
What can be improved:
- The state-wise migration flows chart needs ability to sort.
- Could have added few more charts or analysis tables. The chart & tables are just a replica of original data.
- Could have added a title & quick summary at overall USA level.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Rajesh Sangati
What is good:
- Map with ability to select state, type of migration and year (from drop downs)
- Answers questions like which states get most net migrations, contribute for 90% of outflows, inflows
- Simple layout and easy to use
What can be improved:
- The map feels hand-drawn. May be a better outline map or shapes would do justice.
- Labels on charts are difficult to read. Should have used 2 letter state code with horizontal orientation.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Richard Dutton
What is good:
- Clear, elegant layout with lots of detail
- Can select a state (from drop-down), year to analyze migration flows.
- Sortable state-to-state migration chart
- Clicking on any state in the map shows further statistics.
What can be improved:
- The state selection drop-down is clumsy to use. Should have used either active-x or slicer or clickable map to make it user-friendly.
- The axis labels on state-to-state migration are hard to read. May be 2 letter codes or scrollable chart would do the trick.
Techniques used:
Form ControlsMaps + VBASortable TablesConditional Formatting
Migration Dashboard by Roberto Mensa
What is good:
- Wow. A very colorful, clear and well designed report
- Slicers for selecting year, type of data and state are well placed and formatted. They look very natural.
- The map / bubble chart / xy plot is a clever piece of work and explains where people are heading or coming from.
- Interesting addition of Wikipedia links for state names, so that we can learn more by clicking.
What can be improved:
- Could have added a title on the top
- An outline map instead of geo-political map would have made the bubble + XY plot pop out more.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Roger Haragushiku
What is good:
- A simple data table along with bubble chart depicting migration data.
- Ability to select a state and year for analysis
What can be improved:
- The map depicts data in the data table. Could have removed one and used the space for something else.
- Could have added a title and quick summary on top.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by S Ramesh
What is good:
- Interesting report. Start with a help screen and can speak the numbers upon selecting a state.
- A map where you can select a state for further analysis.
What can be improved:
- The map with radio buttons feels somewhat busy. Could have used a simpler outline map with clickable text-boxes for smooth layout.
- The charts which show details are on other sheets. The contest rules specify creating one chart or dashboard on a single page.
- Although built-in help is nice, there is no way to see it again. A help button would have been useful.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Shailesh Patwardhan
What is good:
- A crisp, simple and number-only dashboard
- Tests a few hypotheses to explain the migration and explores what may have caused the movement
- Sections on key findings & unexplained are very useful
What can be improved:
- The precision of numbers seems excessive given the nature of them (and margin of error). Could have rounded numbers to nearest %, thousand or million as needed.
- A few charts could have made the insights pop out better.
- Could have added analysis by a selected state. This makes the dashboard personal and interesting.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Shamik Sharma
What is good:
- Clear, elegant dashboard with lots of detail, interactivity and analysis
- Ability to analyze by selecting a single state, multiple states and year.
- Additional data on unemployment rate, gross state product (GSP), international migration helps understand the migration trends better.
- Very good colors, alignment, layout and feel.
- Built-in Help sheet to explain the dashboard
What can be improved:
- While the dashboard provides powerful analysis and ability to interact, a little bit of conclusions or summary text could have helped in interpreting it better.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Somalinga K
What is good:
- A simple dashboard with ability to explore any given state’s migration trends and understand one state to another flows.
- Colorful and simple.
What can be improved:
- The data-validation in cell I2 was incorrectly setup (corrected it in download file)
- Instead of showing data as-is based on selection, could have added some analysis or exploration on why the migration may have happened.
- Should have used consistent fonts, alignment & colors and prevented errors thru IFERROR()
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Srinivas Chilukuri
What is good:
- Beautiful colors and layout. Enables quick analysis and exploration.
- Ability to select a state & year for deep-dive analysis
- Additional data median income, temperature & crime-rate helps understand migration better.
- Inflow vs. outflow scatter plot is interesting
What can be improved:
- The Choropleth map on top feels under-utilized. Could have generated map based on selected state instead of all states.
- Alignment is a bit off in few places. Also the charts on right could use grid-lines or repeated axis labels for better readability.
- The file is password protected (VBA code). This is against rules.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Stacey Baker
What is good:
- A very insightful & detailed dashboard.
- Ability to explore migration trends based on state, year, various metrics (crime rate, per-capita income, unemployment rate, median home value, median rent, % of unmarried population etc.)
- Ability to compare up to 4 states on various metrics to understand reasons behind migration.
What can be improved:
- The dashboard is too long. Could have reduced the map size and arranged everything on one screen / page.
- Reading the dashboard is tricky due to its length. A help sheet is needed.
Techniques used:
Become Awesome in Excel & VBA – Create dashboards like these…
My comments:
- Learn how to create interactive dashboards & reports using Excel
- Develop your own macros & VBA code
- 50+ hours of video training
- Learn at your own pace
- Click here to know more
Migration Dashboard by Suriya Banu
What is good:
- Unique design and interesting choice of colors & layout
- Ability to select a state by clicking on cells with state 2 letter codes.
- The neighbor state statistics is insightful. It shows consistent movement of people with-in neighboring states.
- Interesting facts about the state.
What can be improved:
- The home screen is drab and has no insights. Could have used it for overall summary and quick insights on migration trends.
- The pie charts are a poor way to depict data like this. Should have used column or bar charts.
- Year selection feels tricky. Should have used a more obvious method.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Thiruselvan
What is good:
- Very insightful & interesting dashboard
- Good mix of charts, observations, fun facts and analysis.
- Ability to select a state for in-depth analysis.
- Pareto analysis to understand migration of a selected state.
What can be improved:
- The pareto analysis feels forced. It would have been better to test whether a pareto behavior is exhibited by the data before going this route.
- Some place the alignment, font sizes, border thicknesses and colors are a bit off.
- Could have used an Active-X drop down for state selection.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Trevor Eyre
What is good:
- Interesting dashboard with ability to compare 2 states for given time period on various parameters
- Simple & elegant design
What can be improved:
- The controls for date range selection feel un-necessary as we have only 3 years of data. The other controls should have been intergraded in to the dashboard to make it compact.
- The charts & analysis leaves one wanting for more.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Tyler Barr
What is good:
- A colorful, interesting design with built-in help
- Slicers for selecting state & year
- Ability to zoom the map view is an interesting touch.
What can be improved:
- The map, 50 state table at the bottom & top 5 migration states on top right all depict same data. Could have removed one of them and used the space for other types of analysis.
- Picture links make the “Where are they coming from” section a bit stretched. Could have used textboxes or regular cells.
- Alignment is a bit off in few places.
Techniques used:
Migration Dashboard by Vikram Krishnamurthy
What is good:
- A detailed dashboard to explore migration from one state to another
- Analysis by yearly trends, average distance from selected state. Also you can explore GDP, personal income and employment for the selected state.
What can be improved:
- Poor choice of charts & colors. The 3d pie charts, in-consistent colors and layout makes it tricky to gain insights from this. Could have used simple bar charts and subtle colors.
- Lots of white space and redundant charts make it hard to understand key points. Should have reduced the charts and made them in to a tight layout.
Techniques used:
Become Awesome in Excel & VBA – Create dashboards like these…
My comments:
- Learn how to create interactive dashboards & reports using Excel
- Develop your own macros & VBA code
- 50+ hours of video training
- Learn at your own pace
- Click here to know more
Like all? Download one zip file with all dashboards
If you are planning to play with all these dashboards,
download this zip file [50 mb, ZIP file].
Make sure you close all other workbooks before opening these files as many contain VBA code.
How do you like these dashboards?
Quite a few of these dashboards are really impressive. Seeing them is just like watching a magic show or world-class ballet performance. I will share my views & our judges views next week.
Meanwhile, Tell us which entries you liked most? Go ahead and share your views.
65 Responses to “Change Data Labels in Charts to Whatever you want [Quick Tip]”
I sometime use a dummy data series plotted on the secondary axis. You can then set the secondary category labels to use the range with the custom labels text.
Apply Category data labels to the dummy series.
Personally, I think this is a great tip. I like the idea of automating the process, although I'm always hesitant to use "add-ons." It seems like it would be a fairly straightforward VBA project. In fact, you could probably use VBA to automatically make the labels themselves, so you didn't need the source cells. I'll look into this the next time I'm needing custom labels.
Bob Bovey's Chart Labeler Add-in (linked above) works like a charm. I needed to add alpha labels to the bubbles in a bubble chart and it gives me exactly what I needed.
You can use the same trick to relabel axes - this is great if you're using the offset formula with a dropdown to create a dynamic chart = just change the axes title as well using an offset.
I know this is but an excel trick, but ...
I think I'd rather see two charts: one with the numbers as displayed and another with the %change between the 2 months. Better yet would be to display the last several months as line charts. Change always needs to be seen in the context of history.
hi guys, this works if you have a single series.
what about stacked bar (multiple series)?
e.g. i have March and April series stacked-bar chart. i'd like to label the TOTAL of both months, but the data label should be [outside-end] of April's bar.
[March]-[April]-[data label of the total for Mar+Apr]
normal labelling dont offer [outside-end] data labelling. Rob Bovey’s Chart Labeler also doesnt offer this.
any ideas?
@David: You can add a dummy series to the stacked bar and stacked it on top of the last month. Now, make the dummy series transparent (no fill, no border) and set labels to it (at inside end). Use the technique in this post to customize labels and you should be good to go.
dear I got your point, but it will show label at x- axis only , how to raise that to the primary series data level , that height just next to the primary series values.
ahhh yes, that's what I'm thinking of too 😉
cheers!
Brill tip....as usual!
@David,
you can also calculate the totals in your data, then add the total series to the chart, move it to the secondary Y axis, change the chart type to a column (not stacked column) chart. Then add data labels for the total series, which you can now place to the outside end of the columns. Finally format the total series to no fill and no line to make it invisible.
cheers, teylyn
@David... Teylyns tip is better than mine. With that you dont have to fix the axis scales.
@Andy & @Alex... good additions 🙂
@Bill: Of course using separate charts is even better. My intention is to show the trick related to chart label customization.
@Teylyn... Excellent. Here is your donut 🙂
thx teylyn 😉
chandoo, i prefer adding another dummy series; BUT with small value (and clickable!) so that it won't force change the axis scale 😉
anyhow, both methods have its merits 😀
Dont know if anybody has come across this before, but I've been using it (well, my own slightly modified version of the code) to add labels to charts and it works very very well
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/914813
-Dan
[...] Chandoo bring us yet another quick tip on how to add data labels to the chart. [...]
chandoo, how do u 'break' the data labels into 2 lines (like those displayed on the chart)?
e.g. 400 (5%) ==> 400 (5%)
David,
You can press Alt+Enter after 400 to get data lables in 2 lines.
How do you do to brake labels into 2 lines if the link is a concatenate? Alt+Enter doesn't work in this case... Any ideas? Thanks.
Got it!!!
I might be of help for someone, so here it goes:
Just place CHAR(10) were you want the break and that's it!
E.g.: =A1&CHAR(10)&A2
My full formula to keep format is:
=TEXT(A1,"0,000")&CHAR(10)&"("&TEXT(A2,"0.0%")&")", were A1 is my amount and A2 my growth %.
Thanks Chandoo for such a wonderful tip....
Please guide me How to make arrow like " Custom Label" table.
Thanks
wow, that works Pipo 😉
thanx!
Thanks dude - making my charts look good - management thinks im the bomb!!
really very useful...Thanks a lot....
[...] How to change data labels in charts to whatever you want [...]
So, now that there are custom data labels, is there any way to change the text justification? All I ever see is centered text but I would like to have mine left justified. Whatever the formatting is in the linked cell doesn't get reflected in the chart. In your example it works OK since there is a number (short length) and then a percent change (longer length). The centering looks OK there. I am working on a time line and would like the labels in more of a list format rather than centered. Thanks.
Hello Chandoo.. Great tip.. Would i be able to color the arrow using formula itself??
Hi Chandoo,
didn't know that we can do that ^^. Out of the topic. is it possible to make the axis label interactive as well. We can change the data through name range but I can seem to find the answer for axis label. I am trying to make interactive bar chart with different number of data and different axis label (name of region for example).
@Fitriadi
Put the text in A1 you want as your Axis label
Select the Axis Label you want to change
With it selected click in the formula Bar at the top of the screen and type =A1
Select with the Tick to the left of the formula bar
Change reference to suit
@Hui
Hi Hui, thanks for the quick reply. But I think what you mean is axis title, because i cant seem to click on the formula bar when i click on the axis label. I did able to do it with the axis title though.
I have a chart with two axis on the X axis I have the date on the two Y axis i have bar and line data. The Line data shows from 30 to 70 in increments of 10. I want the 70 to show a label £ without putting in a text box eg £70 and none of the other figures will have the £ sign. Is there a formula or a quick way in Excel 2003 to do this.
Many thnaks
@John
Select the X-Axis you want to format
Right Click, Format Axis
Add a Custom Number format of "£"0
Thanks Hui but that changes all the values to have the pound sign I only want one value to show with the £ sign. And these values are on the y axis. There are two y axis.
You can't format a single entry or component of an axis text
Easiest way would be to add a text box to the chart
"Formula used to create £ symbol on secondary scale (i.e. not text box)"
This is part of the test I have to do Hui so you must be able to do it otherwise it wouldn't be part of the test.
I am at a complete loss on this one I have tried all the methods you have described.
John
@John
Select the X-Axis you want to format
Right Click, Format Axis
use the following Custom Number format
[<70]"";[=70]"£"0;;
Brilliant I had to ammend slightly but spot on.
[<70]general;[=70]£0;;
Thank you so much Hui.
John
What great info! This and other tips on this site are awesome. Thanks Chandoo!
This is awesome! Saved my day
Has someone figured out how to do this in VBA code? This is exactly what I need.
How do I format labels in a scatter plot with over 200 labels to change. Is there no way of creating a column with the labels you want so that excel automatically includes these labels instead of the 'series labels'
Hi Chandoo
I used the XY Labeler and it worked for me.
Thanks
Vipul
It's Very Helpful to me ~ Thank A lot.
Hi,
Great info!! I want to know if it possible to hide a specific data label except when the cursor is in the data.
For instance, I have a lot of wells plotted in a XY chart with a map as a background, the x and y are the coordinates of each well. However, when I want to know a specific well in the chart is so hard to find it, I need to check the coordinates in the chart and then find to which well correspond those coordinates. If I put all the well label the chart looks messy.
What do you recommend me??
Thank you in advance
@Itzel
I would add another series which highlighted a specific well
Add a Drop Down which lists all the wells
Using the Cell Link from the drop down, Retrieve the X & Y co-ords for the well
Plot the well as a Marker using a new series on the chart
It may be worth while you uploading a copy of the file, Refer: http://chandoo.org/forums/topic/posting-a-sample-workbook
I've used the tip from the tutorial and it works great until now. I have to move the entire xlxs file from my computer onto a flash drive to get it to my computer at work but I loose he Data Labels when I move my project. It just says cell reference instead.
Anyone know how to move my file and still keep the Data Labels?
Thank you in advance!
This should not be the case. Did you make sure the cells to which data labels refer to contain the data?
Well yes. To clarify, everything works perfect on my computer. And all the cells witch the data labels refers to contains data and there in the same workbook as the chart. Just on a different sheet. Then I make a copy of the file, put it on a flash drive and even tjen, when I open the file from the flash drive on the same computer everything works perfect. But when I put my flash drive in another computer (I've tried several) the data labels doesn't refesh! All cells looks the same. The chart works just fine. Text box's within the chart aswell. Just not the data labels. And I have somewhere between 150 and 200 of hem. I don't want to update all of the manually everytime I move the file. Please help.
What if you use another means to transfer the file (say email or file sharing service)?
Chandoo, thank you for your wonderful site - I really like the way you present info!
Is it possible to make the custom data label table dynamic, ie up/down/sideways arrow depending on changing data? I don't want to use any add-ins.
Thank you this has helped a ton and saved me time 🙂
[…] Do this for each of the labels and soon you’ll have labels for each of the groups. (here is another explanation for how to add custom labels with clearer step-by-step instructions for this […]
Thanks, great tip.
One problem, I cant seem to conditionally format the data labels now. EG, Red font for minus %, which I can to in a 'normal' data label.
Any ideas how to get around this?
@JohnH
Try: [Black]0.0,[Red]-0.0,0.0
@Hui
Yes this is what I would normally use. But seemingly with the 'custom data labels' this doesn't seem to work. I guess it makes sense as with the custom labelling, you could be putting anything in as a label.
I've worked out a workaround now anyway, its a bit long winded, but it works!
Cheers
Hi,
I have a bar chart that shows actual performance against targets (overlapping bars) and what I would like is for the data label to show the % of actual vs target. I can get a column in my pivot that shows this but don't know how to have the label from another data set showing.
The graph is linked to a pivot with a slicer which makes it even harder to pull together.
Any ideas?
Thanks!
Anna
Any ideas>?
This VBa code changes labels one by one for you:
Sub GraphsShowSeriesName()
'activates datalabels of a chart and changes ALL
'of them from the default showvalues, to Seriesname one by one.
ActiveChart.ApplyDataLabels
Dim item As Variant
For Each item In ActiveChart.SeriesCollection
item.DataLabels.ShowSeriesName = True
item.DataLabels.ShowValue = False
Next item
End Sub
Thank you! This was the first article when I searched.
Thank you! Worked perfect
In Excel 2016, after generating a data label,
> double click data label
> Label options
> Label contains/Value From Cells
Here you could select the data range of custom data label.
One problem I have found - I have a 10 bar chart with the 10 bars individually linked to labels that sit in a grid alongside the source data.
If I decide to hide or group together rows, the labels go out of sync.
For example, If I group row 5 the charge removes the bar for that set of data but the label that was linking to bar 5 is now assigned to the new 5th bar, which was actually my 6th row of data. Bars 7, 8, 9 and 10 are also now showing the wrong labels.
I don't know of a solution, but in my case the labels were numeric values so I just changed to a stacked bar chart and added a clear stack above the data with the values plotted as data.
Hi I am preparing a X-Y scatter chart. Now when i hover over the scatter points, a hover label appears which shows the values corresponding to the X,Y values. Now I also want that hover label to display additional name mentioned against each Y values in the column adjacent to the Y series column. I had done all the research but not bale to find any solution....can anyone help.
@Ankit
You could consider trying a Bubble Chart
First I realise that this post is not an exact follow-on from the main topic, but now I think what I am asking for is another type of custom labels, and this thread is as close as I can find, so here goes....
Can I request some help with charts?
I Have 4 columns of data to plot. Sounds easy, right?
This is the only page in a new spreadsheet, created from new, in Win Pro 2010, excel 2010.
Cols C & D are values (hard coded, Number format).
Col B is all null except for “1” in each cell next to the labels, as a helper series, iaw a web forum fix.
Col A is x axis labels (hard coded, no spaces in strings, text format), with null cells in between.
The labels are every 4 or 5 rows apart with null in between, marking month ends, the data columns are readings taken each week.
Y axis is automatic, and works fine.
1050 rows of data for all columns (i.e. 20 years of trend data, and growing).
The Chart I have created (type thin line with tick markers) WILL NOT display x axis labels associated with more than 150 rows of data.
(Noting 150/4=~ 38 labels initially chart ok, out of 1050/4=~ 263 total months labels in column A.)
It does chart all 1050 rows of data values in Y at all times.
I change the charted data range to 160 or more rows of data (155 to all 1050) and suddenly the labels become random.
It will display labels 1, 4 , 6 , 7, 9 , 10, 15, and miss all labels in between and all after 100 data rows.
I revert to 150 data lines plotted, it goes back to first 38 labels ok.
Repeat to 160+ rows plotted, random again, only with a new random selection of labels displayed. All others are missing.
So the chart is now largely meaningless, since you can not tell how fast the readings are increasing.
I have played around with numbers of rows (using 100 to 1050), chart types line, scatter, and ribbon, even cone – same happens when I change the number of data rows in all types.
I have played with the format of the chart in every way I can find a control for, including drag/expanding 165 row ticks out to 3 times A3 page size to make 2cm gaps between labels, does not reinstate the missing labels.
Is this a known bug with later versions of excel ?
(like finding the hard way cells now only hold 255 characters, so losing half your clients comments ! )
Is there a work around?
(note the same data set in my old home XP excel charts this fine in every way)(and on the first go)(copied hard data from old XP version)
Thank you, Chandoo.
Best Regards, M
Hello! Quick question that's entirely off topic. Do
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might be able to resolve this problem. If you have any suggestions, please
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Hi in my Chart data labels reflecting for (slicer) person A and I am changing in B it's not reflecting please help me to identify the error and make it correct