In June 2019 I explained and demonstrated a number of Excel’s financial functions – see below for more details.
CPD note – if you are claiming CPD for watching this recording you need to keep your own records. People who attend the live sessions receive an annual listing of attendances.
Webinar Materials
These functions take three or more arguments, but there are a few things you need to know to use them correctly. Most involve loans or calculations associated with the time value of money.
This session covered the following six functions
- PV – Present Value of future regular cash outflow
- PMT – periodic loan repayment calculation
- CUMIPMT – cumulative interest – great for loan schedules
- RATE – interest rate
- FV – future value of regular investment
- NPER – number of periods
The session finishes with a loan model that calculates the “missing” value for a loan scenario based on two out of three inputs. The IFERROR function is also discussed.
In May 2019 I examined and demonstrated some guidelines and techniques for creating charts for dashboards.
CPD note – if you are claiming CPD for watching this recording you need to keep your own records. People who attend the live sessions receive an annual listing of attendances.
Webinar Materials
In this session I focused on chart and dashboard guidelines plus some techniques used to create small charts for dashboards.
I also looked at creating a bullet chart, which is an alternative to gauge, speedo or dial chart.
The session covered
- general chart guidelines
- questions to ask yourself to develop better charts
- best charts to use
- charts and formats to avoid
- using text boxes on dashboards
- how to create small charts
- chart templates
- lining up and re-sizing charts
- useful number formats for dashboard charts
- using the #N/A error with charts
- how to create a bullet chart
As always I shared a few other tips.
Switching between rows and columns in a normal chart is easy via a button on the Design tab. But how do you do it with a PivotChart?
When you are moving images, charts or other objects that float above the grid you can use the Shift key to make it easier.
Bold Your Headings
Apparently this is not widely known, but you should always bold the headings in your tables.
Then when you use Format as Table (Ctrl + t) on the Home ribbon tab the header row will be correctly identified.
This also applies to the Ctrl + Shift + L shortcut to insert the filter drop downs.
It also applies to the ranges used for charts.
In general ALWAYS BOLD your headings – it is something Excel looks for.
Ctrl + b is the bold shortcut.
Timeline charts are an effective way to display events over time. You can use a new Excel 2016 feature to easily create a timeline chart.
In a recent webinar on conditional formatting I was demonstrating how to create a horizontal progress bar using conditional formats when someone asked an interesting question about creating a vertical progress bar. It is possible and in this blog post I will explain both techniques.
When plotting Actuals and Forecasts on a single line chart you may want to use a vertical dotted line to identify where the Actuals finish and the Forecasts begin.
Here’s another way to create a Step Chart. This one is quicker. I wrote previously about using a scatter plot and error bars but it required a lot of chart changes. This one hacks a line chart and requires no chart changes.
Gauge charts are not a standard chart in Excel and are quite complex to create. Gauge charts should be avoided for dashboards.
The TreeMap is like a square pie chart, but it has the added ability to show a hierarchy.
The Step chart is not a standard Excel chart but it is a useful way to display values over time. You have probably seen a step chart but you may not have known what it was called. It sort of looks like the city skyline or something you would create on an Etch-a-Sketch.
Pie charts have a lot of drawbacks and limitations. One major limitation is they can’t handle negatives. One of Excel’s new charts can help out.
Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic
2018-04-27
You may have noticed that Excel gives every chart a unique number when it creates the chart. It is displayed in the Name Box in the left corner above the grid. You have the ability to change that name and make it more descriptive.
We’ve all been there, our charts are looking just right and then some one inserts a column or changes the column width and throws out all our perfectly proportioned charts.
Charts have a behaviour that many people don’t realise. That behaviour can also be turned off. If you hide a row or column in the data range used by a chart, the values will also be hidden on the chart.
I prefer to call them Bridge charts rather than Waterfall charts, but Waterfall is the common name.
Excel added Waterfalls in Excel 2016.
I think the name Bridge is more descriptive since a bridge takes you from one place to another which is what the chart does with values.
Waterfalls in nature only fall down, whilst a waterfall chart has measures that rise and fall.
This blog post show many examples. Most examples are not done in Excel.
Link to blog post.