“Do you know of an easy way to show Access query results in thousands?
Thanks DataPig.You are the like that black bird on Angry Birds – the bomb.”

Ok….so I added that last sentence. But Christina did ask a pretty good question.

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Here’s how you can format Access query fields so that they show as thousands.

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You first start with a working query. As you can see, this query shows revenue by market with an indication of how much of that revenue comes from Internet Sales. You’ll notice that the revenue columns inundate you with lots of numbers. That is to say, the revenue columns are difficult to read. Showing these columns in thousands would help readability.

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Go into Design View and right click on the query field you want to format.

This will pull up a context menu where you can select Properties.

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In the Property Sheet dialog box, you will see the Format property.

Here, you can enter any format syntax you would like. In this case, we want to enter a format string that will give us numbers in the thousands place. So we enter $#,###,.

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Once we save and run the query again, we can see that the numbers are in thousands place – making them much easier to read.

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Access can handle pretty much any number formatting Excel can. So you can get just as fancy in Access as you can in Excel.

For example, I can get fancy and add a “k” indicator to all the revenue numbers by changing the format string to this: $#,###, “k”.

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And remember, this formatting trick can be applied to Forms and Reports also (simply apply the formatting to their respective Format properties).

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There you have it Christina. I hope that helped.

Related posts:

1. Documenting Access Queries in Excel
2. Changing Sort Order of Access Crosstab Headings
3. Getting to Workdays in Access
4. Replacing the Microsoft Access Splash Screen
5. Create a Keyboard Hot Key to Start Excel or Access

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What I ended up with is this cool technique that allows me to replace my old Form Controls with Pivot Slicers. As I select each slicer, my dashboard responds as it would would if I were using a set of Form Controls. Keep in mind that the charts and other components in my dashboard are in no way connected to a pivot table.


 

In this post, I’ll walk you through the steps required to set this up. But, if you want to skip to the punch line, here is a sample download.

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Step 1:

Create a simple table that holds the names you’d like for your controls, along with some index numbering. Once you have that, create a pivot table from it.

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Step 2:

On the Insert tab of the Ribbon, you’ll see the Slicer command. Click anywhere on your pivot table then choose this Slider command. This will activate the Insert Slicers dialog box. Once activated, simply choose the field that holds the names you’d like for your controls.

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Step 3:

At this point, you will have a slicer. Now, you can right-click the slicer and choose Slicer Settings to activate the Slicer Settings dialog box. This dialog box provides for a handful of formatting options.

In this scenario, we would want to remove the word CHART and also remove that filter icon. To do so, we can uncheck the ‘Display Header’ option.

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At this point we have a clean looking slicer.

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So what now? Well, here is the thing. We now have a slicer that basically controls a simple pivot table. As I click on the word Expense, the pivot table will filter to show the index number for Expense.

Here is the interesting bit. The filtered index number will always show up in the same cell (B3 in this case). So this cell can now be used as a trigger cell for: vlookups, matches, offsets, etc.

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In the example I shown in this screenshot, I’m using the filtered trigger cell to control the values that are going into my dashboard staging area.

As I click my slicer on the front end, the formulas here in the back end will respond because the pivot table is getting re-filtered to change the trigger cell.

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The drawback to this technique, of course, is that it can only be used with Excel 2010.

So if your entire audience is using Excel 2010, this is definitely a nifty trick you can apply to your dashboards. If half your audience is still on Excel 2007 or 2003, then you’ll want to stay with your standard form controls.

Related posts:

1. Cut the Size of Your Pivot Table Workbooks in Half
2. Showing Multiple Pivot Table Subtotals for One Field
3. Forcing Number Formatting in a Pivot Table
4. Creating a Frequency Distribution with a Pivot Table
5. Transposing a Dataset with a PivotTable

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After reading my post, Chris Umphlett got inspired to create a macro that automatically sets the data points in a chart to the same color as source cells.

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Here's how it works.

If you were to create the source data for a pie chart, coloring the individual cells as you go…

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…then create a standard pie chart. You'll get a standard chart. You'll notice that Excel ignores the cell colors and applies default colors to the data points.

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But if you then run this macro (which is a slightly altered version of Chris's macro), the macro will color the slices of the pie to match the source cell of each respective data point.

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The result is a nothing short of neato!

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Just for giggles, I decided to create this small bit of code to chart my Excel color pallet.

This code will convert my color pallet to a range, color the cells to each respective color in the color pallet and then call the ColorPies sub procedure shown above.

Sub ColorPalletPie()
Dim i As Integer
For i = 1 To 56
Cells(i, 1).Interior.ColorIndex = i
Cells(i, 1).Value = i
Next i

ActiveSheet.Shapes.AddChart.Select
ActiveChart.ChartType = xlPie
ActiveChart.SetSourceData Source:=Sheets("Sheet1").Range("A1:A56")
ActiveChart.SetElement (msoElementLegendTop)
Call ColorPies
End Sub

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If you have Excel 2007 or 2010, you can run this code to get something like this.

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Notes:

1. To use the ColorPies macro, simply copy the code in this post and paste it into a standard module.

2. As the macro is written, only pie charts will be affected. You can have this code affect other chart types by removing the line of code that reads If myseries.ChartType <> xlPie Then GoTo SkipNotPie.

3. In my limited testing, I've confirmed that this macro works in Excel 2003, 2007, 2010.

4. You can download Chris' original workbook with his code by visiting him at his site.

Related posts:

1. Auto Adjust Chart Label Positions

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For example, I can make this chart easier to digest by removing all but the first and last data labels.

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Once I have only two data labels, my eyes immediately take in the message of this chart (that we went from 11 to 53).

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All that being said, it is a bit of a pain to label just the first and last points in a chart.

So I wrote a small macro to do just that!

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This macro will alter each chart in the active sheet so that only the first and last data points have labels. To use this macro, simply copy and paste the code you see here into a standard code module.

Related posts:

1. Auto Adjust Chart Label Positions
2. Automatically Unprotect Sheets Based on Domain Name
3. Status Bar Fun – Show Cell Selection Info
4. Running Crosstab Queries in Excel
5. Sort by Color in Excel 2003

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I'm not sure how useful this actually could be, but it's charming enough to share with my 12 fans.

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Let's say I created this chart – and I want to apply specific coloring to each series without having to painstakingly change all the color options in each series.

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All I have to do is color the source cells that feed my chart series….

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…then I run this macro…

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…and Zoomo! The chart will automatically adopt the colors in the source range.

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It works for column charts too.

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Notes:

1. To use the macro, simply copy the code in this post and paste it into a standard module.

2. As the macro is written, the chart can only adopt the color of the first cell in the series range. So you technically only have to color the first cell in source data for each series.

3. Remember this macro colors the entire chart series, not individual data points - so you couldn't use this on a Pie Chart.

4. In my limited testing, I've confirmed that this macro works in Excel 2003, 2007, 2010.

5. And before you dashboarding nerds ping me, I know that gaudy colors like Yellow, Red, and Orange are bad - I used them for demonstration purposes only.

You can download a demo here

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Hopefully, this is useful to somebody out there.

Related posts:

1. Auto Format PivotTables to Match Source Data
2. Auto Adjust Chart Label Positions
3. Automatically Unprotect Sheets Based on Domain Name
4. Status Bar Fun – Show Cell Selection Info
5. Fun with Custom Lists