Greetings and salutations, my fellow VBA-fearin’ congregation. Evangelizin’ Jeff here, spreading the good word about everlastin’ VBA serenity. You may remember me from mah preeeevious sermons such as Tables, PivotTables, and Macros: music to your ears and Big trouble in little spreadsheet. Well today, I’m going to praise the work of a high-yah pow-wah.
Our most pious Brother Jon Peltier (who’s fine presence is to mah left) broke his vow of silence over at the PeltierTech monastery to make a most inspirin’ observation during his recent confession Highlight a Specific Data Label in an Excel Chart:
Because I’ve been doing a lot of coding lately, my first thought was an approach using VBA. Then of course I came to my senses, and worked out a non-programmatic approach.
If possible, it’s usually advantageous not to rely on VBA for such tasks.
Hallelujah, brother!
My visionary brother is right: if there’s one rule of VBA that you should religiously observe, it’s to let the application be the application, where ee-fishin’ tah do so. A whiles back, I jokingly spoke it alike this:
The serenity prayer for Excel:
Lord grant me the VBA skills to automate the things I cannot easily change; the knowledge to leverage fully off the inbuilt features that I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.
(And I particularly chuckled at Excel Ninja BobHC’s response: You been on them tablets again.)
This sentiment is echoed in the commandments given us in Professional Excel Development (written by those latter-day-saints Bovey, Wallentin, Bullen, and Green):
This Good Book evangelizes that Excel developers “…shalt be divided into five different categories”:
- Basic Excel users, whom generally use Excel for fairly simple tasks, but as their exposure to Excel grows, so does the complexity of their worksheets and use of complex worksheet functions, PivotTables, and Charts.
- Power Users, whom have a broad understanding of Excel’s functionality, and occasionally use snippets of VBA from the Net or via the Macro Recorder, but their code tends to be messy, slow, and hard to maintain.
- VBA Developers, whom make extensive use of VBA – perhaps too much…to the point that they tend to use VBA to tackle practically every problem.
- Excel Developers, whom realize that the most efficient and maintainable applications are those that make the most of Excel’s built-in functionality, augmented by VBA where appropriate.
- Professional Excel Developers, whom know more languages than your typical Babel Fish.
That leap from VBA developer to Excel developer is worth striving for. (Don’t bother striving to be a Professional Excel Developer…they are so nerdy that they get about as many dates as your typical cloistered monk or nun). Unfortunately gaining the wisdom to jump from that third class to the forth one ain’t easy, and dedicated sermons on this matter are few and veryfar between.
Far too often the likes of yours truly are often so focused on leading you not into temptation and instead down a righteous path, that we simply never take the flock anywhere near enough to temptation so that we might cautiously peer at it from a safe distance and say in our most solemn and hushed tone “That way surely leads to hellfire, damnation, and eternal recalculation”. No siree, I’m afraid we usually opt instead to simply get the flock away from there.
However, help is at hand, sinners. Forums such as our very own Chandoo.org/forum are a great place to get guidance on such spirited matters…particularly if you ask the right question, such as “What is the best way to achieve X using Excel version Y”. But you’ll need to ask an open question based around what you are trying to accomplish, rather than being overly focused on how you are trying to accomplish it.
For instance, if you ask “How can I efficiently achieve X with VBA“ then that is all you will get…answers about the most efficient way to do it within the confines of the particular tool you have specified. Which will often not be the most efficient way. In fact, I’ve lost count of the number of times where someone has asked for a formula or VBA solution to some devilishly complicated problem – and got something devilishly complicated formula or code as a result – when a mere PivotTable would have sufficed. Or when some very simple Structured Query Language (SQL) via the in-built (but antiquated) Microsoft Query interface would have nailed it.
[Aside: SQL is basically a database language use to perform the database equivalent of lookups and to crunch numbers, or to conditionally join large datasets based on multiple complex conditions. SQL can be directly leveraged by Excel with minimal programming. Heck, you can use SQL to do stuff with NO programming whatsoever via Microsoft Query – a handy (if ancient) little interface bundled into Excel that will look familiar to any Access users. For an excellent Excel-centric introduction to SQL, read Craig Hatmaker’s amazing Beyond Excel: VBA and Database Manipulation blog. Chandoo also has a great guest post by Vijay – Using Excel As Your Database – on this subject. Ignore all the naysayers and unbelievers in the comments who say “Excel shalt not be used a database” for they know not what the point is. Which is that yea Excel doeth speak in SQL tongues at a pinch, and SQL is pure salvation when it comes to manipulating data, be it Big Data, Small Data, or Somewhere-In-Between data.]
Not to mention the miracles even a layperson can perform if they have the almighty Excel 2010 and PowerPivot installed. Or Excel 2013’s Data Model, which lets you mash up data from Excel Tables and serve them up directly as PivotTables with not a VLOOKUP or Macro in sight.
The end of Excel ain’t nigh…
Every release, Excel gets stronger and stronger. Excel 2010 offered us sinners significant improvements over previous versions…giving us things like Slicers and the free PowerPivot add-in. Excel 2013 takes a giant leap forward in allowing us to leverage off of inbuilt functionality to do things that we would otherwise require tons of complex code and complex formulas to achieve. Had Excel 2013 been launched 10 years ago, I simply wouldn’t need to have been a-preaching VBA and SQL to as many unbelievers as I have. If we keep abreast of these changes, then as the functionality of Excel ramps ever up, our code can ramp down accordingly.
The bottom line here is this: if thou strive to be a really good Excel developer then thou best get to know what’s behind just about every nook and cranny of the Excel application itself. Particularly the newly prophesied ones (yea the power of PowerPivot compels you,according to that dark preacher Mike Alexander). So go and explore all those mysterious things on the ribbon. You don’t have to master all of them…but it sure does help if you have an inkling of what they all do. Not just the obvious things like Tables and PivotTables, but the more mysterious ones like Slicers, Data Validation, and What-If-Analyis. And also the completely hidden ones like Goto Special. Not only do all those things do things natively that would require many Shekels of VBA code to replicate, but most are completely addressable from VBA to boot. Meaning an Excel Developer can simply say “Excel – do that thing with this data“.
Before you try to bend Excel to your complete command, study it well. No matter how much you want to jump right in tinker with Excel’s very soul, don’t discount what’s effectively printed on the outside of the box. If you do, you’re just another lazy devil writing hellish code.
Feel free to leave your own theological questions and musings in the confessional box below. Unless it’s to say that you don’t like Pokey LaFarge. Keep that to yourself. Because I love ’em. Saw them live in Wellington a couple of weeks back. Definitely worth checking out if they come to a town near you.
31 Responses to “Beautiful Budget vs. Actual chart to make your boss love you”
Would be considerably easier just to have a table with the variance shown.
On Step 3, how do you "Add budget and actual values to the chart again"?
There are a few ways to do it.
Easy:
1) Copy just the numbers from both columns (Select, CTRL+C)
2) Select the chart and hit CTRL+V to paste. This adds them to chart.
Traditional:
1) Right click on chart and go to "select data..."
2) From the dialog, click on "Add" button and add one series at a time.
One more way to accomplish it is just select the columns into chart. Press Ctrl+C and then press Ctrl+V
Regards
Neeraj Kumar Agarwal
Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to work for me in Excel 2010. The "Var 1" and "Var 2" columns cannot combine two fonts to display the symbol and the figure side-by-side.
Secondly, there is no option to Click on “Value from cells” option when formatting the label options. The only options provided are Series Name, Category Name or Value.
@TheQ47... the emoji font also has normal English letters, so if you use that font, then you should be ok. I am assuming your computer doesn't have that font or hasn't been upgraded for emoji support.
Reg. Excel 2010, you can manually link each label to a cell value. Just select one label at a time (click on labels, wait a second, click on an individual label) and press = and link it to the label var 1 or var 2.
I am using excel 2010, please explain how to apply Step 12
Regards
Neeraj Kumar Agarwal
Hi Neeraj,
"Value from cells" option is only available in Excel 2013 or above. In older versions, you have to manually adjust the label value by linking each label seperately.
Read this please: https://chandoo.org/wp/change-data-labels-in-charts/
Sir, you are just awesome.
Your creativity has no limit.
Regards
Neeraj Kumar Agarwal
Hi Chandoo,
I just found your website, and really love it. It helps me a lot to be an Excel expert 😉
Currently I am facing with a problem at step 11:
Var1 Var2
D30%
A5%
B0%
B4%
B7%
C10%
C13%
D27%
I42%
Though at mapping table, I used windings, here formula uses calibra. How I can change it? I am able to change only the whole cell. In this case numbers will be Windings too.
Thanks for your help!
Hi Mariann... Welcome to Chandoo.org and thanks for your comment.
If you wanted to use symbols from wingdings and combine them with % numbers, then you need to setup two labels. One with symbol, in wingdings font and another with value in normal font. Just add the same series again to the chart, make it invisible, add labels. You may need to adjust the alignment / position of label so everything is visible.
[…] firs article explains how you can enhance your charts with symbols. You can simply insert any supported symbol into your data and charts. To some extend you can […]
You're a good person, thank you to share your knowledge with us, I will try to do in my work
Great visualization of variance. My question is that is this possible in powerbi?
How would you go about it?
HELLO, WHY CANT I FIND VALUES FOR LABELS IN EXCEL 2013
Dear chanddo sir,
What to do if we have dynamic range for Chart. How this will work. can you able to make the same thing works on dynamic range.
Sir Chandoo,
Good Day!
First, I'd like to say that I am very grateful for your work and for sharing all these things with us.
I tried to do this chart but it seems that the symbols don't work with text (abs(var%),"0%") unless we keep the Windings font style.
The problem is, it converts the text into symbol as well and you wont see the 0% anymore. I'm using Windows 7.
WOW - Segoe UI Emoji
This is the greatest discovery for me this month 🙂 Thanks for sharing.
Here's my two-cents:
https://wmfexcel.com/2019/02/17/a-compelling-chart-in-three-minutes/
Sir This is awesome chart, and very easy to made because of your way to explain is very simple , everyone can do. Thank you
one problem i am facing, I hv made this chart , but when i am inserting data table to chart it is showing two times , how can i resolve this
in this chart when i am adding new month data for example first i made this chart jan to mar but when i add data for the apr month graphs updated automatically but labels are missing for that new month
Hi Renuka,
Please make sure the formulas for labels are also calculated for extra months. Just drag down the series and set label range to appropriate address.
So I am playing with the Actual chart here - but amounts are bigger than your - you have 600 as Budget - my budget is 104,000 - is there a way to shorten that I am unaware of
thank you - I LOVE YOUR SITE
Thanks for the tips and tricks on Excel. In the Planned versus Actual chart examples, you use multiple values (ex. multiple Categories in above). How can this be done when we have only 1 set of values? For example if I have only this:
Planned Actual
SOW Budget 417480 367551
How can I create a single bar chart like the one above?
Thank you Chandoo.
This one is just perfect for my Quarterly Review presentation on Operational Budget against Actual Performance for the Hospital I'm currently working with.
Just Subscribed today (10 minutes ago)
Is there a way to make the table of data into a pivot table to be able to add a slicer for the graph due to many different categories and months?
Hi, I tried to modify you template with something appropriate for me, and I found a problem. this template was modified by me started with excel 2010, then 2016 and finally 2019. Same thing - somehow appear an error - or didn't show the emoticons for positive percentage or doubled the emoticons for some rows. I suspect to be from excel. if is need it I can sand you my xlsx for study. Please help if you can.
Hi Chandoo,
Could you please check the Var Formula in Step1. You have mentioned budget-actual and when i did this i got different values but when reversed like actual-budget i got the actual value what you have demonstrated in step1.
Please share your view.
This is a great chart (budget vs. actual). However, in trying recreate it, I cannot color in the UP Down bars individually, and they all become formatted with the same color. I'm using Office 365. Look forward to the feedback.
Thanks.
Dan
pls explain in detail step 7
While in the Excel sheet you have used following formula for Var
Var = Actual - Budget
But
in the note, you have written
Var = Budget - Actual
Good Presentation and Data information.thank you so much chandoo.