Suggestions Map Sales Data with Excel

I am trying to map excel based sales data in an interactive way.

Can anyone suggest good plug ins or places to start looking for a way to incroporate maps in my SS?

We sell both domestically (USA) and Worldwide


Thanks

My first-pass guess at map incorporation would be, create scatter-plot chart with a map picture as the chart background, and match the scale of the chart to the geopositional data implicit in the background picture?

Hey ben_hensel,

I'm not trying to hijack this thread, but am also looking to make an interactive "map" scatterplot..

Can you elaborate on how exactly this is done? Can this be done without vba or any additional coding in the background? Does each data point get its own x and y axis on the chart somehow?

thanks for any additional input!

Basically,
1) Make it an x/y scatterplot.
2) Format the "Chart Area" with a picture--a map
3) Scale it so the points sit where you want

In the posted example, I grabbed a world map from Wikipedia to use.

Then I set the axis of the graph to be -180/+180 for x (degrees longitude) and -120/+90 for y (degrees latitude, plus some extra on the bottom because it's got a screwy projection for Antarctica). That way I can input latitude/longitude points in the chart and they just pop up over the map where they're wanted; I didn't have to do any special scaling.

This doesn't use any VBA or particularly special techniques, so it should only take a few minutes if you've already got the map picture you want and your data set.

Ben,

Thank you for the information so far! Connor, sorry to be taking up your post, but hopefully this information is helpful to you and anyone else looking. Less posts on a forum makes a search easier, at least I think so..

My next question may get things more spiced up. Say I have two data columns, column A which holds the States (CA, FL, CO, NY, etc) and another column with values. How could i use this approach but instead have my markers use the state names instead of the coordinates. Also, is it possible to use a "bubble scatter" chart to show larger values as larger markers, and small values as smaller markers??

MODs, if this needs to become a new thread I can post my own.

Any more input would be great though!

1) Without numerical data, you can't chart their position; use some kind of lookup to get there.
Getting the numbers wouldn't be hard, so you'd just need to "turn the crank", so to speak, by taking the state name, grabbing the lat/long off a table, and then feeding that into the chart.

2) Bubble Charts are a pre-existing chart type.