A technique to build an interactive MS Excel dashboard. For more, visit: www.verydashbored.com

1. Tutorial 2 (Part II ):
Building an Interactive Dashboard
using MS Excel
By Pranav Ghode
Business Analyst

2. A Recap…
• Tutorial 1: We learnt to build a simple
dashboard
• Tutorial 2 (Part I): We got introduced to an
interactive dashboard
• And now in Tutorial 2 (Part II), We will build
the interactive dashboard

3. And the Agenda for this one is…
A. Adding Interactive Controls on our dashboard
B. Defining our Logic to run the interaction
C. Running the interaction between you and the
data

4. A. Adding Interactive Controls
All interactive controls in excel can be added
directly from the “Form Controls” box as
shown below in the “Developer’s tab”
The reference file is available on www.verydashbored.com

5. A. Adding Interactive Controls
What if you don’t see the Developer’s tab?
Step 1. Click on “Office Button”
Step 2. Click on “Excel Options”
Step 3: In “Popular” tick “Show
Developer tab…”
The reference file is available on www.verydashbored.com

6. A. Adding Interactive Controls
As per Tutorial 2 (Part I)…
We had decided to flip our dashboard pie chart
between “Singapore” and “India”
Singapore India
So we will add two “Option Buttons” from the “Form control” on our Dashboard (and
name them respectively)
The reference file is available on www.verydashbored.com

7. B. Define the Logic
• The logic for our example is:
If Selected Option button is Singapore then display
“Singapore” or else display “India” if selected
accordingly.
• Obvious isn’t it?
– For this example the answer is YES!
– But as your dashboard becomes complex it may not
be so.
The reference file is available on www.verydashbored.com

8. B. Defining the Logic
Link your button to a cell….
• Right click one of the option buttons
• Go to “Format Control”
• Then go to “Control”
• And in the “Cell link” creates link to a cell
• In this cell the value changes serially as you
move from one option to another
• In our case its cell “N12”
The reference file is available on www.verydashbored.com

9. B. Defining the Logic
Now write the logic….
• As you choose the option buttons the value
changes serially
– If Option Button 1 is selected the linked cell value will
be 1
– If Option Button 2 is selected the linked cell value is 2
– And so on….
• So, in our case; since we have only two options:
– If, N12 = 1, then Display “Singapore” or else display
“India”
– The Formula is =IF(N12=1, "Singapore", "India")
– I have entered the above formula in cell “N13”
The reference file is available on www.verydashbored.com

10. C. Running the Interaction
• After you write the selection logic, we will pass the
selected information into a filter
• I use the =SUMIFS() formula as a filter to refer “list
format data” in excel. (*See Tutorial 1)
• The selected data will be passed into this formula as a
criteria
• Personally, I find technique to be very convenient
• It involves an initial pain of designing
– But once, you do that
– The fruits are very sweet
• Plus, you can be creative with it, unlike Pivot tables
The reference file is available on www.verydashbored.com

11. C. Running the Interaction
Let us understand the SUMIFS formula first…
• SUMIFS input parameters are:
(Sum_range, Criteria_range1, Criteria1,
Criteria_range 2, Criteria2,…..)
SUMIFS adds up the values in a range of cell
passed as ‘sum_range’ based on the selected
‘criteria1’ from the ‘criteria_range1’
As you add more criteria_ranges, you can be
more specific in terms of reference to your data
The reference file is available on www.verydashbored.com

12. C. Running the Interaction
Let us use it now…
• In our example,
-The first ‘criteria_range’ is the expense column D because
we wish to refer particular expenses
-The expenses to be selected as ‘criteria’ are mentioned in
cells G2:G7
-The second ‘criteria’ is the entity selected using our logic
(that is, from cell N13)
-And the criteria_range is the column containing the
entities (that is, column B)
• For a clear understanding, download the file from the
below mentioned link. And yes its absolutely free!
The reference file is available on www.verydashbored.com

13. C. Running the Interaction
So finally you have learned your basic Interactive
Dashboard…
• You can now refer to the % share of expenses
of the entity of your choice directly from your
dashboard
• Any modification/addition of more records in
the source data will automatically update your
dashboard
• Play around and build some of your own
dashboards using this method and do share
your experiences/files with everyone

14. Thanks!
And don’t forget to add comments, initiate discussions,
ask question or call for any help…
Pranav Ghode
www.verydashbored.com