- #WATERFALL CHART IN EXCEL HOW TO#
- #WATERFALL CHART IN EXCEL SERIES#
- #WATERFALL CHART IN EXCEL DOWNLOAD#
This comes down to personal preference as well as what you want to convey to the audience.
I think that if the chart is labeled well and the bars have sufficient space between them, this additional segmentation mechanism is unnecessary. Using multiple colors: I often see waterfall charts with the beginning and ending bars one color, the increases another color, and decreases a third color.
I do recommend keeping the lines thin and light so they don't compete with the data visually. Horizontal lines connecting the bars: I like how these draw the reader's eye across the graph from left to right and also think the lines help to make it clear that the starting point for the next change is where the last bar ended.
#WATERFALL CHART IN EXCEL DOWNLOAD#
You can download the Excel file here in case you want to take a closer look (and see the math I used for the invisible columns).Ī couple of notes on my personal preferences when it comes to waterfall charts: The horizontal lines connecting the bars require a little more brute force: those are lines I've drawn in Excel on my chart.
#WATERFALL CHART IN EXCEL SERIES#
To get from this interim step to the final waterfall chart, simply right click on the invisible data series and reformat it so that there is no fill and no line. Note that both the beginning and ending figures are anchored at the baseline, while the interim values float, showing the changes in total, piece by piece. Further deductions begin at the lowermost point of the column preceding it and pull the values further downward. At the turning point from addition to deduction, the first deduction starts at the top of the prior bar and shows its value downward.
Each addition begins at the uppermost point of the column that preceded it and builds upward. The invisible series acts like a sort of placeholder to help me line up my other data. I have a stacked bar chart with two series: the visible series is the data that I want to show: beginning headcount, hires, transfers in, transfers out, exits, and ending headcount. The waterfall chart that portrays this, then, could look something like this (note that all numbers are made up): When all of these changes are applied, we are left with the ending (end of year) headcount. In terms of changes, there are some things that increase headcount (new hires, transfers into the given group) and some things that decrease headcount (exits from the company, transfers to other groups). The starting quantity is the beginning of period (e.g. I find waterfall charts to be useful when you are interested in visualizing a starting quantity, positive and negative changes to that quantity, and the resulting ending quantity. For example, in my day job it's sometimes useful to visualize changes in the number of employees in a given team over a period of time, say, over the course of a year.
#WATERFALL CHART IN EXCEL HOW TO#
I like waterfall charts, so I thought it might be useful to do a post focusing on them: what they are, an example use case, and how to use what I like to consider "brute-force-excel" to create them. A few weeks ago, Andy Kriebel did a makeover of one of my visual makeovers.
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