Clearly and Simply

99 Blog Posts and 1000 Comments

A Celebration Post: Looking back at 99 Blog Posts and 1,000 Comments since this Blog started

This will be an unusual post.

Not only that we had 99 articles since this blog started, we also received the 1,000th comment recently. I am talking about reader comments only, i.e. my replies are not included in this number. A perfect coincidence for a celebration post, isn’t it?

So, no Excel or Tableau tips and techniques today.

Wait! Where are you headed? Hang on.

Be assured that today’s post will not be a simple self-adulation. Well, at least not only. It will – of course – provide some hopefully interesting data analyses and data visualizations, too.

Now, starting point was the question what to analyze and visualize in this celebration post. My first idea was showing some web analytics dashboards. However, I decided to refrain from that because those numbers are embarrassingly low. Instead, today’s dashboards will focus on the content of this blog: both the articles and the comments. And while we’re on it, we will also have a look on my performance: again regarding the posts and the comments.

So please have a look inside. The visualizations are a mixture of “sitemap-like” views (allowing to browse and access all content and comments) and some performance analytics. The dashboards are provided online via Tableau Public, so you you can explore them directly here in your browser, even if you don’t have Tableau installed.

Pivot-like Marimekko Charts in Excel

How to create an interactive “Pivot-like” Marimekko Chart in Excel allowing the user to select the visualized dimensions and measure on the fly

The previous post Marimekko Charts in Microsoft Excel described and provided a VBA-based template to create a Marimekko chart in Excel made up of freeform textboxes. In the article I claimed, the used approach would offer some flexibility. Action speaks louder than words, so let’s turn this rhetoric into action.

A Marimekko chart visualizes one measure (numerical) by two dimensions (categorical). The original template provided in the previous post was based on a data source arranged in a crosstab.

Now let’s say you have a data source with several dimensions and measures organized in a flat table. That’s the norm, isn’t it? If you want to quickly analyze this data in Excel, you will probably use a Pivot Table and maybe a Pivot Chart allowing you to easily select which dimensions shall go to rows and columns and which measure shall be summarized in the values area. Now this is exactly the feature we want to bring to our Marimekko chart template.

Today’s post describes how to enhance the existing template with interactive features to enable the user to easily define what shall be displayed in the Marimekko chart. As always, the article includes the Microsoft Excel workbook for free download.

Marimekko Charts in Microsoft Excel

A VBA based Microsoft Excel Template to create a Marimekko Chart aka Matrix Chart aka Mosaic Chart for free download

A Marimekko or Matrix or Mosaic Chart (called Marimekko hereafter) is a combination of a 100% stacked column chart and a 100% stacked bar chart combined in one view. It works like a 100% stacked column chart, but additionally the width of a column is proportional to the total value of this column.

Microsoft Excel does not provide a built-in chart type for Marimekko charts, but there are several workarounds available to accomplish this. For instance, Jon Peltier shows in his article Marimekko Charts how to turn a combination of a stacked area and a line chart into a Marimekko chart. My friend Chandoo, Conditional Formatting aficionado he is, uses the cell grid, formulas and cell value based formatting rules to create a pseudo Marimekko chart in his post Market Segmentation Charts using Conditional Formatting. Of course there are also a couple of other blog posts on this topic and also commercial Add-ins available.

Although Jon’s and Chandoo’s solutions work well and are available for a long time already, I decided to add my 2 cents with another approach: a VBA based solution creating a Marimekko chart made up of freeform text boxes. The main advantage: reduced set-up time and more flexibility, if the number of rows and columns of the Marimekko chart changes.

Today’s article provides a VBA based solution to create a Marimekko chart in Microsoft Excel and explains how to use and customize the template to suit your requirements. As always, the workbook is available for free download and the VBA code is without password protection.

Extract Custom Shapes from a Tableau Workbook

How to extract the Custom Shape Images embedded in a Tableau Workbook

In Tableau Software you can use the Shape Mark property to encode data in a view by different shapes. You can either use Tableau’s default shapes (circles, squares, crosses, etc.) or so called Custom Shapes. Each Tableau installation comes with a set of Custom Shape palettes like arrows, bars, currency and gender symbols and others. Have a look into the Shapes folder of your Tableau Repository to see what is already there.

On top of that, you can also add your own Custom Shape Palette to this collection. Simply create a new folder in the Shapes folder of your Tableau Repository and copy the image files you want to use as shapes (.png, .gif, .jpg, .bmp or.tiff, but no .emf) into this folder. If you then assign shapes in the Edit Shape dialogue in Tableau, this folder automatically appears in the Select Shape Palette drop down and your images can be used to encode the data.

Tableau stores the used Custom Shapes in the .twb file, to make sure the workbook is fully functional on every computer, i.e. also on installations which do not have the Custom Shapes in the Tableau Repository.

So much for the background. And so far, so good.

Now, imagine you have a Tableau workbook using Custom Shapes, but you do not have the image files in your Tableau Repository, because you are working with a new or different computer, you received the workbook from a colleague or downloaded it from Tableau Public.

What if you want to reuse the Custom Shapes in another workbook?

Is there an option to extract the Custom Shape image files from a Tableau workbook?

Not built-in, but there are two existing workarounds provided by Matt York in the Tableau Forum and on the Tableau Public Blog. Although Matt’s solutions are very smart and easy to use, I decided to add my 2 cents with a third workaround.

Today’s post includes the links to Matt York’s Tableau Shape Extractor workarounds and describes a third option of how to do the same with a Microsoft Excel workbook. As always, the article provides the Extract Custom Shape Excel tool for free download.