Back when I was doing MBA, one of the first courses we took was called MOC (Managerial Oral Communication). The idea of the course is simple. Each of the 60 students in class would give a 12 minute presentation on any topic of their choice to everyone. Then everyone has 8 minutes to provide suggestions, remarks to the presenter so that he/she can improve. It seemed like a great idea then. But most of the time we would criticize each other, in our eagerness to become almost perfect.

Back to yesterday. In a coincident I met one my earlier bosses at our apartment complex. We had a very good chat about the time when I was working for him. All of a sudden I have realized that he is probably one of the best bosses I have seen. And I work with a lot of people as I am a consultant. But this one stood out from tons of others. And I knew the reason, “he knows how to appreciate people and mean it”

I think truly recognizing people for what they are good at is a remarkable life skill. And when you actually say something really wonderful about other person and mean it you are just making him / her so happy that sometimes they remember it for rest of their life. Don’t confuse appreciation with sucking up or merely saying “wow, this is nice”, they don’t really mean anything most of the time.

I want to practice appreciation in my life, master this skill, it is important if I want to have better relationship with people in my life.

Whose day you are going to make today?

[Image from Quadrupede]

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Creating KPI Dashboards in Microsoft Excel is a series of 4 posts by Robert from Munich, Germany.

Read part 1 of this series, Creating Key Performance Indicator Dashboards in Excel with Scroll Controls before reading this post.

The Challenge - Sorting

With the post KPI Dashboard Table – Scroll we started a little series of posts on how to create interactive dashboard tables with Microsoft Excel. Showing an extract of a longer list of items and enabling the user to scroll up and down was only the first step. Allowing deeper data analysis on the dashboard definitely needs more features. One of the most simple but common techniques for data analysis is sorting. Again we want to enable the user to select the sort criteria and see the results immediately without leaving the dashboard. That is: no need to go to the sheet with the raw data, no need to select ranges, no need to use the sort commands on the Excel menu or ribbon. And of course we want to do this without using VBA.

The Solution

The table on our dashboard looks almost the same as the first one, except the 5 option buttons to select the sort criteria beneath the column headers and the fact that the selected column is highlighted with a darker fill color.

Download the excel file with KPI Dashboards - Scroll and Sort and read below to find how it is done.

The implementation

After some smaller changes on the dashboard, like adding the option buttons, linking them to the same cell and adding simple conditional formatting to the columns, the interesting part is the sorting algorithm on the sheet “calculations”. There are various solutions for sorting in excel using formulas. Most of them are use array formulas, definitely the most elegant way of doing this, but hard to understand. The step-by-step solution with several “help columns” may not be as elegant as an array formula, but it will probably be easier to understand.

This is how the dashboard sorting works:

• Get the relevant data (depending on the sort criteria) by using the function OFFSET (column E)
• Make sure to have a list with unique entries by adding a very small number (column F)
• Sort the list using the function LARGE (column G)
• Use MATCH to find the corresponding position of every value within the unsorted list (column H)
• Put together the whole data table in a sorted form by using the results in column H and OFFSET (col-umns (J to O)

We are almost there. All we have to do now is changing the starting references in the OFFSET-functions on the dashboard (refer to row 9 on sheet calculation instead of row 5 on sheet data). That is all.

Final remarks

If you are using Excel 2007, you will notice that the conditional formatting of the cells underneath the option buttons will behave somehow strangely when clicking on another button. If you scroll down until the range is out of sight and scroll back again, everything looks fine. This doesn’t happen with Excel 2003, so it seems to be a bug in Excel 2007.

What next?

In next week’s post we will show how to further enrich our dashboard table by highlighting extraordinary values of those KPIs that are not the selected sort criteria.

Download the KPI Dashboards Excel and learn

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Last Saturday our internet connection at home went off. I called the road runner folks hoping to getting it back up, but no luck. We were told to wait till Monday evening before the service personnel could restore the connectivity. Thankfully, we didnt feel all that bored and could spend lot of time talking to each other, playing cards, watching some old dvds, taking lengthy walks inside our apartment community and cooking great food.

What would you do on an internet free weekend?

Here is a list of very good excel articles I found during last week:

Incell Spark Lines using VBA

Rob found that you can actually create shapes using UDFs (user defined functions). So he used that to create a neat function for drawing incell spark lines. Very useful and simple. [Daily Dose of Excel]

Buy Office 2007 - Ultimate version dirt cheap!!!

If you have .edu email id then Microsoft Ultimate Steal deal is the way for buying MS Office 2007. You can save 91% off the usual price of Office 2007 Ultimate. [via Digital Inspiration]

How to Install add-in : Microsoft Excel 2007

My friend Jon provides a step by step guide to installing add-ins to MS Excel 2007, very useful if you are constantly downloading UDFs / Macros from web and experimenting with them

How much money do you need in your retirement?

Another variation of retirement calculator. Whatever may the version you use, the message is simple: Start saving.

8 Slide making tips you can learn from IKEA

This is not exactly an excel tip, but useful to everyone who makes their living by telling stories, selling ideas.

Like this edition of Excel links? Also see:

• Excel Links [Aug 19]
• Excel Links - Who is Obama edition [Aug 12]
• Excel Links - [Aug 4]
• Excel Links around the web - [July 29]
• Excel Links Around the Web [July 22]

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Excel date time features are very handy and knowing them a little in depth can help you save a ton of time in your day to day spreadsheet chores. Let us prepare for your date with the sheet using these 10 handy tips.

Before jumping on to the tips, it helps to know how excel represents the date and time.

Microsoft Excel stores dates as sequential numbers … By default, January 1, 1900 is serial number 1, and January 1, 2008 is serial number 39448 because it is 39,448 days after January 1, 1900. Excel stores times as decimal fractions because time is considered a portion of a day. [Excel Help Text on Date / Time]

So you see, Date and Time are in fact numbers in Excel. Just enter a date in your excel sheet and format it as number to see its equivalent numeric value. Today is 25-Aug-2008 and excel represents it as 39685.

Now that you know the little secret behind date / time, lets move to the 10 tips.

1. Test whether a date is future or past

You can find whether a date is past or future or today using simple if formula like: =if(this_date=today(),"Today",if(this_date < today(),"Past","Future"))

today() is the spreadsheet function using which you can find today’s date.

2. Find the number of days between two dates

Since dates are represented as sequential numbers in excel, in order to find out how many days are between any given 2 dates, just subtract one from another. For eg. you can use =today()-datevalue("08/15/1947") to find that it is 22,291 days since India’s independence (August 15, 1947).

3. Formatting dates

Having date / time in the sheet is not enough if you can not make it look like the way you want. For eg. you may want to show date as “Monday - August 25, 2008″. You can use cell formatting to do this. Just select the cell with date and hit ctrl+1 and in the “Number” tab select “Custom” as category and mention “dddd mmm dd, yyy” as format string.

Try these other date formats as well. Learn more about custom cell formatting.

4. Auto-filling only weekdays

We all know that in order to fill a series of dates in excel sheet, you just need to enter first few dates and then select the range and drag to auto fill the selection with rest of the dates. But what if you need to fill only weekdays?

You can do that easily with Auto fill option - “weekdays only” as shown on the right. learn more.

5. Find out the day of week from a given date

Finding whether a day is weekend or weekday is useful if you are making project plans or resource allocation sheets. You can do this by simply using weekday() function. For eg. =weekday("08/25/2008") would return 2 (Excel, by default starts the week at Sunday, hence Monday is indicated as 2).

If you would like to start the week with Monday like most of us do, use =weekday("08/25/2008",2).

6. Highlight weekends using conditional formatting

Often when you are making project plans or reports, it helps if the weekends or after office hours can be grayed out. You can do this easily with conditional formatting as shown below:

In order to do this, we can test whether a given a day is weekend or not in conditional formatting by =WEEKDAY(this_date,2)>5 as weekday() returns 6 and 7 for Saturday and Sunday.

You can use similar logic to highlight after office hours (before 9AM or after 5PM) for time values. Learn these 5 tips to master conditional formatting.

7. Adding / Subtracting dates

Since Excel dates are nothing but numbers, you can find out the difference between two given dates by just subtracting one from another. For eg. ="09/20/2008"-"08/25/2008" will return 26

In order to add n number of days to a given date, you can just add that number to given date. For eg. ="08/25/2008"+26 will return 09/20/2008

8. Ensuring a valid date or time is entered in a cell

When sharing your sheets with others to enter some data, it may be useful if you can restrict them to enter only valid date values in cells that require date value. You can do that using cell data validation feature in excel. Just select the cell to which you want to apply date / time validation, goto menu > data > validation and set type as “Date” or “Time” and specify criteria.

For example, you can specify criteria like the one on left to ensure that date entered is at least 18 years before 1/1/2008. What more, using message option of data validation settings you can even show messages like this:

9. Insert today’s date, current time using key board shortcuts

Just go to the cell where you want to insert date and press ctrl+;

To get current time, use ctrl+shift+; ( thus ctrl+: )

Btw, if you are planning to get today’s date or current time using formulas, you can use today() and now(). Also learn these 11 very useful excel keyboard shortcuts.

10. Filling every 2nd / 3rd day

Often when you are entering dates in to the spreadsheet, it may be required to just enter every second or third day only. You can do this by changing the step value of auto-fill criteria (the default step value is 1).

• Enter the start date in first cell.
• Select a range of cells in which you would like to fill rest of cells.
• Go to Menu > Edit > Fill > Series
• In the dialog, mention step criteria as 2 or 3 as shown aside.

That is all, with these 10 tips I hope I made your date with that spreadsheet is made little exciting.

Like this? Also read Master copy - paste with these 17 paste tricks, 6 things you dont know about excel if() functions, 15 fun things you can do with excel

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Google docs spreadsheet app is going mainstream with each passing day. Recently they have introduced split() formula to divide text in to multiple cells using a user specified delimiter.

The syntax for this function is =split(text value, delimeter), for eg. =split("pointy haired dilbert", " ") would result in 3 individual cells with “pointy”, “haired” and “dilbert” as values. Learn more.

This is a very good replacement for excel import text functionality using which you can paste large text files in to excel sheet.

Also try: concat() function to combine lots of cells to a single value

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The sky, the greenery and the instant rainbows at Niagara falls are mind blowing. We had great fun at the falls last weekend. I took several photos, here is one for you savor during the weekend.

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Every week Pointy Haired Dilbert celebrates the art of chart making by sharing 5 of the most beautiful, innovative and effective infographic ideas from various sites. Click here to see the visualizations featured earlier.

Pop, Soda or Coke? - Countywise terms used for sweetened carbonated water

The pop-vs-soda map tells how marketers have been effective and creating a habit in people. The blue colors are for pop, yellow for soda and red for coke. As you can see, quite a few people call any soda as coke, especially in the southern regions of US. [via strangemaps]

Document Contrast Diagram - State of Union Address in 2007 and 2008

Visualizing text is a difficult thing to do. More so when you have 2 texts and need to compare. Document contrast diagrams seem like an interesting way to explore two large pieces of text to see how they space out. The state of union address for 2007 and 2008 are shown above, 2007 is on left. [via Tim Showers]

How poetry looks?

VisualPoetry project aims to take various poetic texts and connect them to show how words (sequences) appear on various poems. Very beautiful. [via information aesthetics]

History of World Records in Olympics

Another NY Times Olympic visualization. This shows how in each successive olympics the world records are created. A simple graphic, but the message is powerful: You should never give up., also see the Olympic medal visualization

What happens when graphs go physical

This is an innovative idea by Joshua Callaghan. He took the graphs like military spending by country (shown on the right), world population since 0 AD, consumer confidence and converted them to public art so that many more people can become aware of the situation. Very powerful and effective way to tell the story. [via flowing data]

Bonus Infographic : [NSFW] Flesh Map

Dont click on it from work, seriously! [via information aesthetics]

Like this edition of cool infographics? Do you know any charts that should be featured here, drop a comment.

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