Panel Charts in Excel (Slanted Area Charts)

[Sal Paradise]

I saw this page which is full of all sorts of wonderful charting ideas. Chart #8 (the panel chart) is something I really want to create in Excel, but seeing the info on peltiertech and Andy Pope's page, it doesn't look like it's anywhere to be found. Has anyone seen a step-by-step tutorial on how to build a chart like that, or am I going to have to figure it out myself?

 

[Justin_B]

Are you asking about the 'Workforce projection by age group"?

Which one were you wanting to build, a) the example of what not to do OR b) the suggested better practice?

The better practice solution appears to be a number of charts placed side by side rather than a single chart.
Must say, it does look good. Good for dashboarding.

I've knocked a quick and dirty example....(in Excel2000)
Do you have somewhere I could email to ?

 

[Sal Paradise]

I mean the revised graph. And it's plenty possible to do similar things in a single graph:
http://peltiertech.com/Excel/ChartsHowTo/PanelChart1.html

I can create plenty of single graphs like that, but it's much much much more difficult to do so with a panel chart and error-bar dividers. I'd guess that it's possible, but it will take me about 2 days to figure out how to get it to work, and I don't want to spend that much time if a solution is easily available.

If you have something approaching a solution, I'd love to see it:
salaryman (p e r i o d) paradise (a t m a r k) gmail (p e r i o d) com

Thank you for your help!

 

[Andy Pope]

It is possible to create the panel in a single chart using area and xy-scatter data series.

The key is in data layout and using Time series axis for the area charts.

I have posted a worked example, although currently there is no explanation of the steps.
http://www.andypope.info/ngs/ng58.zip

but the steps are,
create area chart on range $A$13:$AX$20
change x axis to Time series
add, via Source data dialog, series for date labels/dividers/tickmarks/titles
change all these new series to xy-scatter and the secondary axis.
format secondary y axis to min=0 max=1
format secondary x axis to min=1 max=43
apply data labels to date series

link title data labels to cells to display Ages text.

 

[Sal Paradise]

Thank you. That is exactly what I was looking for. I did check your site as well, but saw nothing when I looked. Did I look in the wrong place, or had you just not put it up yet?

 

[Andy Pope]

No I have not posted any pages on the subject.

All I did was quickly knock up an example file and made it available as forum does not allow attachments.

 

[Sal Paradise]

Both you and Jon Peltier are invaluable resources for making the most of Excel graphing. Have you considered writing a primer to get people started? I find that the hardest part of charting/graphing is that the order you change chart types/the type you start with really change what you can do with each graph. Either that or I just don't understand how the graphing engine works well enough yet. At any rate, thank you again for your help and all the resources on your page.