Xcelsius Journal

Figure 1 This is not a screen shot; this is the actual file.

Last month I showed you how to do some clever things with Sliders. This month I want to show a simple but effective facility in Xcelsius. The component we'll be concentrating on is the Interactive Calendar. (Please note: the Interactive Calendar component is only available on Xcelsius XL Professional and Enterprise XE products.)
Figure 1 shows an example of this. If you are viewing this article online you are be able to use the component.

Setting up your spreadsheet for the Interactive Calendar

The Interactive Calendar Component makes it easy to view data over a desired time period.

The example I would like to use involves data on page views and hits to a web site over a range of dates. These appear in columns A, B, and C in Figure 2.

Figure 2

It would be nice to view selections of this data over any given week. This is handled in the table at E5:L7 on the sample spreadsheet. The highlighted cell (located at F5 on the spreadsheet) is the beginning date for the range of dates you're interested in viewing. There is no formula for this cell, as its value is revised every time you click on a different date in the calendar.

All the dates appearing to its immediate right (cells G5:L5) are set by incrementing the date by 1.
The values for page views and hits are looked up using the Excel VLOOKUP function. Since the spreadsheet file is available at: http://www.xcelsiusbestpractices.com/landingZone/articleReprints.html, I'll allow you to go through the formulas including VLOOKUP on your own.

Setting up an Interactive Calendar

In your Xcelsius work area, drag and drop the Interactive Calendar component onto the canvas. Double-click on it to open its Properties Panel, and set your Insert Source Data as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3

For the moment, I am going to hold off on doing more work on the calendar component. We'll add the finishing touches shortly.