PTS Marimekko Chart Utility Documentation.

Installation

Start installation by closing Excel, then double click on the PTS_Marimekko_Pro.exe file from the zip file you've purchased. The Marimekko Chart utility is installed as an Excel add-in, and will be available the next time you start Excel.

The Excel User Interface

Excel 2000 through 2003 Interface
When installed, both versions of the add-in add a new menu, PTS Charts, to Excel's Worksheet and Chart Menu Bars, and this PTS Charts menu has a new item, Marimekko Chart, added to it. The add-in also adds a new toolbar, PTS Charts, and a Marimekko Chart icon is added to the new toolbar. This menu and toolbar are shown below:

Excel 2007 Interface
When installed, the professional utility adds a new custom ribbon tab, PTS Charts, to Excel's ribbon. The new tab has a group called Custom Charts, with a new item called Marimekko Chart. If you use other PTS charting utilities, they also appear on this custom tab. This new ribbon tab is shown below:

The Marimekko Chart Dialog

To use the utility, select a range of data to chart, then select the Marimekko Chart menu item. The program assumes that there are labels in the top row and in the leftmost column, and numerical values in the grid.

Suitable Data for a Marimekko Chart
 

The following dialog appears.

Marimekko Chart Dialog
 

If a range containing chartable data has been selected, this range is indicated in the range selection box at the top of the dialog. If the selected range consists of multiple discontiguous areas, if the selected range contains no data, or if the selection is not a range, this box is empty. If the selected range consists of a single cell, the utility identifies the range of data surrounding the active cell in the range selection box, like the Chart Wizard does. If the selection is larger than one row high and one column wide, the utility identifies only the selected range in the box.

Program Output

The utility inserts a new worksheet for its output. The selected data is copied to this worksheet in an appropriately staggered arrangement, and a chart is created that plots the data. The chart is a standard Excel chart; it can be copied and pasted, moved, resized, and otherwise formatted as any other Excel chart. Some changes, of course, will break the carefully laid out appearance of the chart, so the user should be ready to undo an operation or completely rebuild the chart.

When the data illustrated above is used to create a Marimekko chart using the Segments in Columns option, the resulting chart looks like this. Colors will vary depending on the palette of the parent workbook, and can be changed as in any other chart.

When the data illustrated above is used to create a Marimekko chart using the Segments in Rows option, the resulting chart looks like this.

Aside from the layout of the source data, this is a "normal" Excel chart. You can add relevant chart and axis titles, reduce the oversize margins around the plot area, resize the text and reposition the labels, and change the fill or border colors to suit.

Accessing the PTS Marimekko Chart Utility via VBA

The ability to call the PTS Marimekko Chart Utility from other VBA procedures has been incorporated in this version of the utility. Documentation is incomplete but will be expanded here at a later time. The following brief explanation should help experienced programmers get started.

The core of the PTS Marimekko Chart Utility is a procedure called PTS_MarimekkoChart, which can be called from other VBA procedures. The syntax of the PTS_MarimekkoChart function is:

        Function PTS_MarimekkoChart(ChartData As Range, _
                                    SegmentsByColumn As Boolean) _
                                    As Chart

ChartData is the range containing the data to chart, laid out in a grid with column labels in the first row of the range and row labels in the first column.

SegmentsByColumn describes the orientation of the data. Segments are plotted as columns in the chart, and the segment labels appear along the top edge of the chart. If the segment names are in the first row of the data, the segment data is in columns, and SegmentsByColumn is True.

To create a Marimekko chart programmatically, a calling procedure could select the data range, then run this line of code:

        PTS_MarimekkoChart Selection, True

To assign the chart to an object variable in order to manipulate it further, the code should be amended:

        Set chtMarimekko = PTS_MarimekkoChart(Selection, True)

where chtMarimekko has been declared as a variable of type Excel.Chart.

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