During one of my nerdy adventures, I came across the need to selectively hide AutoFilter Dropdowns. That is to say, apply an AutoFilter to a table, but only let the user see and interact with one or two of the dropdowns. Here's the deal:
Posts Tagged ‘Visualization’
Selectively Hide AutoFilter Dropdowns
May 20th, 2010The Trouble with Chart Data Tables
April 26th, 2010Chart Data Tables are actually very useful for showing plotted values without inundating your audience with a gaggle of chart labels. I use them all the time.
My problem with them is that their uglier than a bag of lips. For all their usefulness, they sure do emit that "1997" feel. Luckily, Excel gives you a few options that help dial back the "ugly" on your chart Data Tables.
Sometimes Two Charts are Better than One
April 19th, 2010Last week, I was caught in a vortex of executive reviews, publishing deadlines, and other miscellaneous family stuff. (Note the placement and miscellaneous status given to "family stuff". This is why I'm going to die alone.)
In any case, during the executive review prep, we had a bit of a debate on how a certain set of data should be represented.
The basic idea is that we have a FY 2010 goal. Each month, we add values to get us to that goal. The question is how to show this on a chart.
Adding Trend Icons to Access Queries
March 23rd, 2010With the release of Office 2007, Excel introduced cool new conditional formatting rules that gave you the ability to show dashboard-esque icons inside cells. With these icons, you can represent performance using different shapes and colors.
As usual, Access gets the short end of the visualization stick. No such functionality exists in your cache of Access tools. But today, I'll show you how to hack your way into showing dashboard-esque icons in Access queries.
A Color is Not Data
February 25th, 2010Ok people. Repeat after me – "A color is not data".
Every so often I get a spreadsheet from someone who thinks that colors play a major role in data management. You know – those people who happily say "I tagged those records with Yellow". Oh really? I don't think my version of Excel has a "Yellow" data type.
Integrating Xcelsius with Excel and Access
February 10th, 2010Being the complete nerd that I am, I work with lots of different technologies. But in the end, I always strive to make those technologies work with Excel. One of those is Xcelsius. Xcelsius is a dashboarding application that takes data and spices it up into slick looking flash presentations.
Those of you who have already been asked to create reporting in Xcelsius may have found it a bit difficult to use. No VBA, no easy way to get connections and no pivot tables.
Well for the upcoming Xcelsius Developer's Workshop, I've come up with a technique where you can embed Xcelsius dashboards into Excel and Access applications.
This allows you to get all the flashy benefits of Xcelsius, but still give users a familiar environment where they can use PivotTables, VBA, MSQuery, etc.
It's too complicated to show with pictures, so I cooked up this video. Enjoy!
» More: Integrating Xcelsius with Excel and Access
Using Dashboard Graphics in Access
January 7th, 2010Let's face it, Access isn't typically a tool you would think of when considering a dashboarding platform. The reporting tools in Access, as slick as they are, don't lend themselves to visualizations.
That is, Access doesn't offer a whole lot in the way of dashboarding graphics. Sure, it has charts and conditional formatting, but nothing like Excel.
In this post, I'll show you a hack to spruce up your Access reporting by using your own dashboarding graphics.
Adding Pictures to Your Buttons
January 4th, 2010Welcome back from the long holiday season. OK…who forgot their passwords after two weeks of being gone? I bet a few of you had to call the help desk for a password reset.
Anyway, the first post of the new year is something light; how to add pictures to your buttons in Excel.
Excel 2010 Improvements Week – Data Bars
December 14th, 2009Christmas is coming soon and this week will be a slow work week for many of you. This lull in the action gives me time to talk about Excel 2010.
I've dubbed this week, 'Excel 2010 Improvements week'. Every day this week, I'll take time to blog about some of the new features in Excel 2010 that strike me as real improvements.
The first topic of the week is Data Bars.
» More: Excel 2010 Improvements Week – Data Bars
Show a Progress Meter in the Status Bar
October 14th, 2009Excel exposes the StatusBar object so we can communicate with our users via a little message in the lower left-hand corner of the screen.
Here's the default message you see in the StatusBar.
Today, I 'll show you how to show a Progress Meter in the status bar.
