Tips: How to Create In-Cell Charts With Apple iWork Numbers
August 29th, 2007 | by Michael |
I found an interesting technique a while back on the Juice Analytics site, that works well in Numbers.
The technique uses the REPT Function, to create neat in-cell graphs.
The Numbers manual defines REPT as:
REPT(text, copies)
- text: The text expression to be repeated.
- copies: The number of times text is repeated.
For example: REPT(”x”,10) gives you “xxxxxxxxxx”.
Let’s look at a “real world” example. I want to show quick graphic of Major League Baseball home run leaders through 8/28/2007. I grabbed the stats off the web, then created three columns. The first column was player name, the second was number of home runs year to date, and the third was reserved for my formula. I pasted in my players, and home run numbers, then input my formula.
The formula was, REPT(”[apple symbol]“, number of home runs)
There are a number of symbols that look good in the in-cell charts, the lowercase “o” or “|” for instance.
Another idea, if the number of items you are charting is large, is to only repeat a percentage of the text. For instance:
REPT(text,(copies*.5))
This will reduce the number of repeated text items by half.
You can download an example sheet below.
Download Incell Graph Template for Numbers
2 Responses to “Tips: How to Create In-Cell Charts With Apple iWork Numbers”
By Gavin on Aug 29, 2007 | Reply
Another idea would be to perhaps do a percentage. So if you had a column of different numbers, and they ranged from 0 to 100, you could make the it be REPT(text,(copies/10)) which would give a full 10 if you have 100, and only 1 if you have 10 in the column. By this way, it would be easier to just look down and estimate by the number of copies.
Also, a similar feature in Office 2007 is the conditional formatting. (Scroll down to see a picture)
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/HA102176291033.aspx
You could do a similar feature in numbers with the REPT function and the conditional formatting to make it different colors based on the number I’d imagine.
By Gavin on Aug 29, 2007 | Reply
Just realized I basically said what was on the Juice Analytics website, must have visited it previously.