Clearly and Simply

Tag: Marimekko Chart

  • 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

    Rubik's Cube - Photographer: Clemens Koppensteiner (flickr.com)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.

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  • 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

    marimekko #2 - Photographer: 4WheelsofLux (flickr.com)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.

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