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How to create a multiple value filter control including a “select all / none” option with Microsoft Excel
If you ever built interactive Microsoft Excel dashboards, I am betting the ranch that there was at least one with some kind of interactive filtering features. For selecting one out of several categories you probably used a drop down list (i.e. a combo box). If you need a multi filter control (i.e. selecting several categories) a multi select list box or several check boxes are the way to go. We had that before: In one of the first articles on this blog I already showed different techniques of how to implement a multi-select control feature on Microsoft Excel dashboards (Approach with Caution).
So far, so good. However, what I didn’t discuss in that article is one obvious requirement you may have for a multiple value filter control on a dashboard: an option to let the user easily select all or none categories with one single mouse click. Especially helpful if you are having a lot of categories.
Today’s post tries to fill this gap: this article shows several options of how to implement a multiple value filter control based on check boxes, including an additional check box to easily select and deselect all categories. As always, the post provides all Excel workbooks for free download.
Techniques to implement the Site Catchment Analysis of Germany in Microsoft Excel
I am sure you are already fed up with articles on Site Catchment Analysis here. I swear it was not my intention to have such an avalanche on this topic here. But it turned out to be a very good example to demonstrate different interesting ideas in Tableau and Excel. After using this example for a how-to tutorial on Calculated Fields in Tableau, I wrote an update for Tableau 6 (Site Catchment Analysis with Tableau 6) and Richard Leeke was kind enough to provide a fabulous guest post series (part 1, part 2, part 3) with excellent insights on how table calculations work in Tableau, also based on the Site Catchment showcase. I finally couldn’t resist to use the example again and showed how this would look like in Microsoft Excel: Microsoft Excel Site Catchment Analysis (Part 1). Since the Excel model is quite a complex workbook, I decided to split this up again into a 2-post series.
So, please bear with me, I have to bring this to an end now. Today’s post provides some more details on the Site Catchment Analysis of Germany with Microsoft Excel.
The Microsoft Excel version of the Site Catchment Analysis of Germany including the calculation of the optimal center
In October 2010 I used a show case of a site catchment analysis of Germany to demonstrate the power of Calculated Fields in Tableau. During the weeks that followed we had quite an avalanche of follow-up posts on this article: Site Catchment Analysis with Tableau 6 described an upgrade of the original workbook to the new version 6 of Tableau, including the roadblocks I hit during the upgrade. In a fantastic guest post series called “Another Look at Site Catchment Analysis with Tableau 6” (part 1, part 2, part 3), Richard Leeke showed how to overcome most of the disadvantages in my implementation.
I suspect you may already be fed up with this example. Despite the risk of boring you, I decided to stay a little longer with this topic, mainly for the following 3 reasons:
The use case turned out to be a very interesting and yielding example for the discussion of features, techniques, workarounds and performance facets of Tableau Software. I guess everything has been said (especially by Richard) with regards to Tableau. But what about Microsoft Excel?
Furthermore, finding data points within a certain radius from a given center has many more use cases than just a site catchment analysis. You may analyze sales performance KPIs, customer behavior or logistical statistics within a certain area. I am convinced, a Microsoft Excel version of the site catchment analysis can be very useful for some of your analyses of geographical data.
Last, but not least, the Tableau implementation allowed to display the results of any user selected postcode, but it lacked a feature to calculate the optimal center of any given radius. A task tailored for Microsoft Excel.
Thus, today’s article will provide a Microsoft Excel workbook to conduct a site catchment analysis and to compare the results of the optimum with any given center, including some nice interactive features on the dashboard. As always the Excel workbook is provided for free download.
How to add a search bar and search functionality to a scrollable table on a Microsoft Excel Dashboard
More than 2 years back my friend and Microsoft Excel MVP Chandoo gave me the opportunity to publish a series of 6 articles on how to implement interactive Microsoft Excel dashboards on his excellent blog Chandoo.org: KPI dashboards with Microsoft Excel. To my surprise these articles still seem to be very popular over at Chandoo.org and Chandoo’s readers even keep on commenting these posts.
Yesterday Milind raised an interesting question: Is it possible to add a search bar to the dashboard to look up values in the source data and automatically scroll up or down to the according row of the search result?
Although Hui already explained how to do this in a comment, I decided to elaborate a little bit on the possible options in this additional article here on Clearly and Simply. Today’s post describes 2 different techniques on how to add a search functionality to a dashboard with a scrollable data table. As always, including the Microsoft Excel workbooks for free download.
Selected techniques to emulate a Tableau lookalike dashboard using Microsoft Excel, including some interactive features similar to Tableau Actions
The recent post described the power of Tableau Actions. Tableau actions allow you to add context and user-defined interactivity features across your workbook. If the user clicks on one of your visualizations, Actions give you full control over what should happen on other worksheets or visualizations. Setting up a Tableau dashboard with various actions like filtering, highlighting and linking to web pages is a piece of cake.
How about Microsoft Excel? Is it possible to implement a similar interactivity on a Microsoft Excel dashboard? Yes it is.
Today’s post describes a set of techniques and tricks to build a replica of the Tableau 50 most prominent summits on earth dashboard using Microsoft Excel. As always, including the workbook for free download.
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