In this post, I would like to consider the use of colors in a dashboard (or, for that matter any analysis tool which uses colors to highlight areas of interest). Everybody believes they have good taste, even though everybody has different tastes. When choosing colors for a dashboard the key consideration is not your taste … Read more
In this post, I would like to pick up the example we looked at last week. We saw that it is possible to highlight specific values in a bar chart. This makes it very easy for the reader to see the key information quickly. In this post, we will consider a similar goal, but for … Read more
In a previous post, we considered how to link Excel files to PowerPoint presentations. This can be a significant time saver as the PowerPoint presentation can be updated automatically. Once you have created the links, life is brilliant, until . . . you need to change which file the PowerPoint presentation is linked to. You … Read more
Sometimes in a chart we want to highlight certain bars so the reader can quickly see the important information. An example would be to highlight our company when it is compared with its competitors (see the chart below). In this chart, it is very easy to see how Fox Books compares to its competitors. There … Read more
If you regularly create PowerPoint presentations that include information from Excel, you will know how frustrating it can be. Having to re-copy and re-paste the information every time a change is made in the original Excel documents. Have you come across the feature which enables you to link your Excel workbook directly into your PowerPoint … Read more
I was recently asked this question – “How can I make my workbook read-only?”. I gave the person an answer. However, the real question they were asking turned out to be “How can I make my workbook read-only for everybody but me”. In this post, we will explore some of the options available. Save the … Read more
My first experience of Bullet Charts came from reading Information Dashboard Design by Stephen Few in 2007. This was the year I started to get serious with dashboards. Initially, to create Bullet Charts I used the 3 stacked bar/column charts approach. Later, I moved to using the two-axis stacked column where possible, but in general, … Read more
We have now reached the end of the Mastering VLOOKUP series. Hopefully, you’ve picked up a few tips and tricks to take your VLOOKUP skills to the next level. If you’ve been following along you will have learned more than just VLOOKUP: Download the Advanced VLOOKUP Cheat Sheet There is a lot to remember, so … Read more
In the previous post in this series, Mastering VLOOKUP, we learned how to look up the 2nd, 3rd, 4th or nth item from a data set. Today, we will be expanding on that by looking at how to return all the matching values in the dataset. Plus, we will combine this with partial matches, so … Read more
In a Macro or Add-in there may be times when you require the user to select a file. It is possible to use the standard FileDialog box for this purpose. The following code is intended to provide the most common settings which you can amend to meet your needs. Open the file DialogBox for selecting … Read more