Tornado Charts in Excel 2007 Update

This is an update to my previous post on tornado charts.

As reader Shaun pointed out, the instructions were created under Excel 2003. Let’s refresh them to Excel 2007.

There is no need for any external add-ins for making good-looking tornado charts. And it takes only 5 steps. Let’s start with data in a table like this:

1. Select the data, excluding the Delta column
2. On the Insert ribbon, choose Bar. Pick Clustered Bar (first one in the 2-D section)
3. Right-click on the horizontal axis, choose Format Axis. On the bottom of the Axis Options pane look for Vertical Axis crosses:, choose the Axis value radio button, and type your base case value (7 in the example)
4. Without closing the window, choose the vertical axis of the chart. Again on Axis Options, check the box Categories in reverse order, and set the Axis Labels menu to Low
5. Without closing the window, click on any of the bars, which should bring the Series Options pane. Move the slider Series Overlap completely to the right (Overlapped).

That’s it! Now you can format the chart as you like. The final result should look something like this:

Keep reading to learn more, to watch a screencast, or download the Excel file

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