Introducing TM Retro Slicer

Posted on March 5, 2012October 3, 2012 by Tushar Mehta

Those who have used a slicer in Excel 2010 slicer may want to see that capability in earlier versions of Excel. I like what Microsoft did with slicers in 2010 and have wanted to extend that capability backwards. For those who haven’t used a slicer, it is a filter on a particular pivot field shown as an independent object.

So, with TM Retro Slicer, one can create a slicer in any version of Excel from 2003 to 2010.

TM Retro Slicer works with versions of Excel from 2003 to 2010. Once enabled, a slicer will be visible on the worksheet.

Switching worksheets will hide the slicer and it will reappear when the worksheet is reactivated.

The slicer will remain across a workbook close and re-open.

For more on this shareware solution, please visit http://www.tushar-mehta.com/excel/software/retro_slicer/index.htm

— Tushar Mehta

Introducing TM Match Target

Posted on March 2, 2012March 3, 2012 by Tushar Mehta

The TM Match Target add-in analyzes a list of numbers and finds combinations that sum to a given total. This has applications in a range of disciplines including processing receipts, reconciling payments such as health care insurance reimbursements or payments by a customer for many outstanding invoices, operations management and operations research, and supply change management.

There are a number of posts, easily found through Google or Bing, that address the same issue, including my own Find a set of amounts that match a target value. This add-in packages the analysis in an easy-to-use interface, includes a means to stop the analysis if it is taking too long and preserve the combinations found so far, together with various options on what results should be shown.

For more please visit http://www.tushar-mehta.com/excel/software/match_target/.

— Tushar Mehta

TM Custom Radar Chart add-in

Posted on February 17, 2012 by Tushar Mehta

A Radar Chart, also known as a Spider Chart, visually compares several entities (products, organizations, investment opportunities, or even people) on multiple dimensions. For example, a manager of a diagnostic imaging (radiology) center might want to compare her facility with the competition on dimensions related to patients such as Time To Appointment, Report Turnaround Time, No Show Rate, and Wait Time.

Or, one might want to compare 6 products A, B, C, D, E, and F on 6 different attributes: Aesthetic Appeal, Compatibility, Strength, Market Size, Durability, and Reliability. The Custom Radar Chart lets one easily compare all the products along each of the dimensions on interest. This is the example used in the documentation. With the axes normalized, the resulting chart would be