KPI performance charts & dashboards – 43 alternatives (contest entries)
Hello all, prepare to be amazed! Here are 43 creative, fun & informative ways to visualize KPI data.
About a month ago, I asked you to visualize KPI data. We received 65 entries for this contest. After carefully reviewing the entries, our panel of judges have discarded 22 of them due to poor charting choices, errors or just plain data dumps. We are left with 43 amazing entries, each creatively analyzed the data and presented results in a powerful way.
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.
- At the bottom of this post, you can find a list of key charting & dashboard design techniques. Go thru them to learn how to create similar reports at work.
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.
CP048: How to create animated charts in Excel?

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In the 48th session of Chandoo.org podcast, let’s make some animated charts!!!
What is in this session?
In this podcast,
- Announcements
- Why animate your charts?
- Non-VBA methods to animate charts
- Excel 2013’s built-in animation effects
- Iterative formula approach
- VBA based animation
- Cartoon film analogy
- Understanding the VBA part
- Example animated chart – Sales of a new product
- Resources and downloads for you
Happy Diwali for all our readers – Animated Flower Pot Cracker in Excel for you…
Today is Diwali, the festival of lights. I wish you and your family a happy, bright and prosperous festive time. May your house shower with lots of light, laughter and love.
Diwali is one of my favorite festivals. It is a time when all family members get together, eat delicious food, laugh to hearts content and light up diyas (small oil lamps) to celebrate the victory of good over evil. This year, my kids (who are 6 yrs btw) are very excited about the festival. They are looking forward to lighting up diyas and crackers (fire works).
To celebrate the holiday, I made something for you.
An animated flower pot firework in Excel.
Save a range as text file using VBA [tutorial]
Last night I asked members of our Chandoo.org facebook page to share an Excel problem you are struggling with. Francis asked,
How to save a file as .txt in vba without quotes? When I save as .txt, the file has got quotes inside of it. I used the code Print, but it didnt work because the file loses its delimitation.
Does anyone know how to solve this?
Let’s understand how to save a range as text and overcome the double quote problem.
CP047: Best Excel tools for Entrepreneurs
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS
In the 47th session of Chandoo.org podcast, let’s see how Excel can make you an awesome entrepreneur.
What is in this session?
In this podcast,
- Why Excel for entrepreneurs
- Key areas of a business owner’s work
- Projects & to dos
- Finances
- Customers & marketing
- Planning & strategy
- Processes & workflows
- 5 features of Excel that help
- Conclusions
Excel Links – Dashboards book delayed edition
Quick update about Dashboards for Excel book:
As you may know, my first print book – Dashboards for Excel (co-authored with Jordan Goldmeier) is supposed to release today – 15th September, 2015. But unfortunately, there is some delay with the printing process, so the book is not available yet. Our publisher, Apress, tells us that it can take two more weeks.
Thanks to all of you who pre-ordered this book. I am sorry for this unexpected delay. Just few more weeks and you will be reading it. 🙂
Time for another round of Excel links
Build models & dashboards faster with Watch Window
Here is a familiar scenario: You are building a dashboard. Naturally, it has a few worksheets – data, assumptions, calculations and output. As you make changes to input data, you constantly switch to calculations (or output) page to check if the numbers are calculating as desired. This back and forth is slows you down.
Use Watch Window to reduce development time.