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Tips For Using an Excel Heat Map Adds in

An excel heat map is one of the most powerful tools to use in a report. It has the ability to generate a heat map with a single click and has the flexibility to be used as a stand alone excel template or as part of a full excel template. It can also be useful for other types of reports and excel functions such as pivot charts, pivot tables, scatter plots and maps. Heat maps have been used widely throughout business and it can make a difference to your sales figures if you decide to take this route. The following will discuss how to add in an excel heat map.

To add in an excel heat map add in you must have an existing working excel workbook that is connected to the internet. Next you must go to your copy of excel and open it. At the top of the worksheet you will see a blank text box. Type in the location where you want to place the map. In my example I had saved my data in a new excel worksheet called Davis weather stations online shop. Choose the map from the drop down menu or from the attachments that are available by clicking on the map in the main box.

You can choose the color of the map by clicking on the appropriate color options on the map. The color of the map is automatically selected based on the current background color of your computer screen. If you do not see a default color option, simply change your color theme to gray. This will also do the same thing as doing a background color change on your outlook email application or any outlook program.

After you have selected the colors for your heat map, you can now click on the heat map add in the box and place your cursor at the pinpointed place on the map. You will see a blank white arrow head start to move up and down the map. Each time you click the head the color of your selected cell will be replaced by the color of the highlighted area. It may take a few tries until you get the feel of where the map should actually appear on your chart.

You will need to right click your chosen map to reveal the map properties. From here you will be able to switch between different map styles. When you click on the arrow style button you will switch to a column chart view. When you click on the legend button you will switch to a grid map view.

Now click and drag over the columns on your grid to create a new column. You will notice two separate views appear. The top view is the actual column that you have placed on your grid. The bottom view is the legend of your selected column. Double click on the empty cell to reveal the contents of that cell.

You may notice that there are two different formatting options for the cells in your grid. The normal default formatting for cells is shown as text, however you can also select cells with the Excel default font size of 12. To change the formatting for the cells click on the appropriate link.

In order to make your heat map more interesting you can also add small bars over the map. When you click on the plus sign you will add a second bar over each of the cells in your grid. You can also make a third bar by pressing the Enter key when you hover your mouse cursor over any single cell. These actions will add up to six bars over each of your cells.