13 Oct 09 Giant chart with conditional formatting

Sometimes I meet demonstrative tasks where the great number of data makes impossible to show it in even a full monitor/paper sized chart.

A few days ago, there was such a task, where I needed to illustrate the harness of hundreds of birds. Those being less adaptable and/or not being a Excel expert, might consider this impossible.

I’ve got a trick to solve it: I don’t use a chart.

Conditional formatting is a perfect tool to do this. Using it, colored cells will compose the diagram. It is possible to create multiple-monitor charts with it. Of course this technique has its own limits too: for an example the number of disposable columns, and the fact, that not all types of diagrams can be created with it. (It can be surely used to create a: bar or a column chart, a scatter plot or a Gantt chart).

This is how a giant chart looks like:

I put some small things on it for better perspicuity and legibility:

• Aid-lines each 10 row and 10 column.
• A tricky headpiece to ensure the legibility of each piece of data in contempt of downsizing.

What do you think about it?

I would appreciate if you would write it between the comments.