Comments on: Data Bars in Excel 2003 – without REPT

By: jeffrey weir

jeffrey weir — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:55:54 +0000

[I never did like Excel 2007’s databars. The gradient at the end just kills me.]

On the up side, they can coexist with text in a cell. I just printed off a very column heavy data dump for my boss on a very tight timeframe. Databars helped highlight some numbers for her, in almost zero time. Granted, it wasn't a long term reporting solution. But I found the feature useful.

By: Bob Phillips

Bob Phillips — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 09:54:35 +0000

Databars are a poor data representation, and databars in 2007 with that dumb fade-off are an abomination. Yours at least don't suffer the fade-off, but they still fail to convey information accurately IMO.

Shouldn't the Excel (Office?) designers be made to study Tufte and Few and get to understand good visualisation techniques (or even read 'Dashboards for Dummies' … plug, plug! Send Jensen a copy Mike.)

By: Liu 's chart blog

Liu 's chart blog — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 02:30:32 +0000

Hi Mike :
It is a cool tip.however ,both this databar and the rept func,will produce a bar that is not ccurate, and when printed ,zoomed ,they are not continuous.
I perfer to create a true bar chart ,and align it to the cell .

By: datapig

datapig — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 21:20:42 +0000

Ron: Very true. This is one reason I can't get completely excited about the new features in Excel 2010 (such as sparklines). If they aren't backwards compatible, it becomes virtually useless to 50+ percent of Excel users. I've yet to see the new conditional formatting tools being used at the clients I work for. They purposely stay away from them for the very reason state.

By: Ron de Bruin

Ron de Bruin — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 20:42:05 +0000

Hi Mike

Like you say in 2007 you can use data bars but if you send your sheet in the body of the mail you will lose the data bars and other new stuff from conditional formatting.

If you use your way you will see the data bars in the mail.

By: DataPig

DataPig — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:59:30 +0000

Joe: You could put negative numbers in one column and positive numbers in another column (next to each other). Pass the negative values to the function as absolutes. Right justify the negative column, and left justify the positive column.

By: Joe

Joe — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:32:44 +0000

This is a great function, but I've noticed that it doesn't work for negative values. How would we adjust the formula to compensate for negative values?

By: marco

marco — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:26:29 +0000

Problem with rept is if you change the zoom as you will notice the scale will change

By: Cyril Z.

Cyril Z. — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:34:09 +0000

>DataPig: Thanks, but I was wondering about the first "gradient" ones. Now I've found this is a "conditional format thing".

For the link, just remove the ending parenthesis. This work fine with this one : http://sparklines-excel.blogspot.com/

By: DataPig

DataPig — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:20:51 +0000

Andy: I never did like Excel 2007's databars. The gradient at the end just kills me. I never did notice char(103) before. Interesting option for non-vba.

Florent: Seems to be a dead link?

Cyril: This function works in 2007 as well.

Roy: I like your DATABAR3 alternative. It does serve to take a bit of work off the user. That is, I think it would be bit easier for a user to enter =DATABAR3(A1, Max(A1:A9), 20) than my original function.