Excel: creating a 'Last Ten Results' indicator panel without using VBA

The BBC website has many good examples of how to display information. The following  device is used to summarise a series of results. 

The BBC use it to display football results in a League Table (see link).  The concept is used more widely in Business intelligence dashboards. There are various approaches to creating this effect. This short article shows a simple way of constructing it using Excel without the need for any VBA coding (Excel skill level: Intermediate). The main idea behind the approach is to use an entire spreadsheet cell for each coloured bar. The colours are controlled by Conditional Formatting.

Step One
Set up a data area. Here, a block of ten successive results by the football team Leicester City F.C. is used. In the illustration, the data is set up on the same worksheet as the dashboard panel. In a real application, the data would probably be held separately. 

Step Two
Each set of bars requires three spreadsheet rows. The middle row is for the coloured bar; the rows either side are clear margins. Similarly,  additional columns are needed between each of the bar cells. Mark out the grid area  by filling each bar cell with a temporary grey background. Then link each bar cell to the corresponding results in the data area.

Step Three
Add Conditional Formatting to the bars. This can be done to the full range as a single block. Three rules will be needed, one for each colour:  In the example, "Win" is to display as Green; "Draw" as Grey and "Loss" as Red. Set the formats so that the font and the background colours are identical, within each rule.

Step Four
If desired, add a light background tint to the whole panel (and set the font colour exactly the same)



Step Five
Shrink the grid by setting column width and row height properties. In the example the following values are used: Bar row 3, margin rows 6, bar columns 1, interval columns 0.17. It may help to zoom to 200% while doing this.

Step Six
To add normal rows of text alongside the bars, merge the three rows in the area adjacent to the bars. This re-creates a more normal row height into which text can be added. When all the row and column adjustments have been made, switch off the grid-lines on the worksheet

It might seem fiddly to set up, but once one line has been created it can be cloned easily. Simply copy and then paste blocks of three rows at a time. 

Enhancements
An additional feature on the BBC website displays the details of each result when the cursor hovers over each coloured bar. A way of adding this type of functionality in Excel (using VBA) is set out in a supplementary article (see link) 



References

Excel: adding interactive drill down to a 'Last Ten Results' indicator panel  by Edgar Bolton. B I Dashboard Design. 31/01/2016  (link)

Excel: Using cell comments to provide "drill-down" details by Edgar Bolton
B I Dashboard Design. 05/08/2015   (link)

Excel: Using arrows to indicate direction of change in performance  by Edgar Bolton
B I Dashboard Design. 26/07/2015   (link)