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SHOCK
» Read more: The 5 Phases of Grief as told by Mrs. Pig and Ava
Use Pivot Slicers as Form Controls
August 30, 2011 3 comments »About a week ago, Bill Jelen sent me an email with a challenge to figure out the nifty trick he shows in this YouTube Video. Inspired by the video, I decided to use the trick in a simple dashboard model.
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What I ended up with is this cool technique that allows me to replace my old Form Controls with Pivot Slicers. As I select each slicer, my dashboard responds as it would would if I were using a set of Form Controls. Keep in mind that the charts and other components in my dashboard are in no way connected to a pivot table.
» Read more: Use Pivot Slicers as Form Controls
User Testing
August 29, 2011 1 comment »I’ll be busy today, releasing a new dashboard for user testing.
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Why spend hours of your own time finding bugs, when you can let users do it for you!
I’ll be back tomorrow with a new trick!
» Read more: User Testing
Color Pie Chart Slices to Match their Source Cells
August 23, 2011 6 comments »A few days ago, I posted a macro that will automatically set the series colors in a chart to match their source cell’s colors.
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After reading my post, Chris Umphlett got inspired to create a macro that automatically sets the data points in a chart to the same color as source cells.
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Here’s how it works.
» Read more: Color Pie Chart Slices to Match their Source Cells
Getting into Stanford University
August 22, 2011 2 comments »Have you always dreamed of getting into Stanford’s School of Engineering and Computer Sciences, but was too much of a loser to even try?
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Well, here’s your chance! Apparently, in an experiment in distributed education, Stanford will be offering their “Introduction to Databases” course FREE to students worldwide.
» Read more: Getting into Stanford University
How to Compress xlsx Files to the Smallest Possible Size
August 18, 2011 14 comments »A colleague of mine (Tim) is both the smartest and cheapest guy I’ve met in a long time. Tim has a knack for analyzing the cost savings of things. So much so that it borders on amusing. For example, he buys his coffee creamer in bulk on-line because it’s “the best deal”. Bulk coffee creamer! Man…that’s commitment.
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His knack for saving has apparently spilled over into disk space.
Tim showed me a trick he uses to compress Excel xlsx files to make them as small as possible. Today, I’ll share his trick with you (my 12 fans).
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I’ve got this xlsx file that’s 20 MB big. I need to shrink the file down to a more acceptable size.
Normally, I would convert this file to an xls file which would make it much smaller. But this particular file has too many rows to convert to an xls.
» Read more: How to Compress xlsx Files to the Smallest Possible Size
Automatically Label First and Last Chart Points
August 16, 2011 6 comments »One of the best practices of dashboard building is to avoid overwhelming your customers with too much data at one time – especially in a chart, where they can lose sight of the primary message if focusing on inconsequential data. One of the common ways dashboard designers help focus the message of a chart is to limit the data labels to only the key points.
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Once I have only two data labels, my eyes immediately take in the message of this chart (that we went from 11 to 53).
» Read more: Automatically Label First and Last Chart Points
Vegetarian Pork Ribs
August 12, 2011 2 comments »The other day, I stopped into Whole Foods Market and I picked up some tasty pork ribs.
They were actually pretty good, so I looked at the label.
» Read more: Vegetarian Pork Ribs
Automatically Set Chart Series Colors to Match Source Cell Colors
August 10, 2011 21 comments »While working on a dashboarding project here, I accidently developed a charting macro that will automatically set the series colors in a chart to match their source cell’s colors.
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I’m not sure how useful this actually could be, but it’s charming enough to share with my 12 fans.
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Let’s say I created this chart – and I want to apply specific coloring to each series without having to painstakingly change all the color options in each series.
» Read more: Automatically Set Chart Series Colors to Match Source Cell Colors
Quickly Change Chart Series Positions
August 8, 2011 4 comments »Well, the summer is over for many of us. I’m back to my regular blogging schedule (whatever that means).
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For my first post back, I’d like to show you a trick I learned from charting guru, Jon Peltier.
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Ever needed to switch the position of a chart series (color and all)?
In this example, I want to show the series in red first. I’ve already created my chart, so I just want an easy way to switch the positions of the columns.
» Read more: Quickly Change Chart Series Positions
