Hi Peter
The shapes used to make up the dashboard widgets can be easily customized using the standard Excel commands for Excel shapes. Here is an step-by-step guide of how to reverse the colors and customize the colored markers used in the dials..
Step #1
Right-click the curved edge of the dashboard widget and select ‘group’ followed by ‘ungroup’.
You should now see lots of small boxes showing the sub-components that make up the widget.
Step #2
Here comes the tricky part – the components are arranged as layers on top of each other (the circle is on top of the dial needle, which is on top of the colored dial markers, which are on top of the backgrounds). To edit the colored dial markers we need to move the needle one layer backwards. To do this, click the needle once then right-click the rectangular edge and choose ‘send to back’ followed by ‘send backward’.
Step #3
Now you'll find that the five colored dial markers are grouped together so we’ll need to ungroup them to change their colors. To do this right-click on the group and choose ‘group’ followed by ‘ungroup’. You should now see five small boxes representing the sub-components of the colored scale.
Step #4
To format any of these individual colored blocks, right-click and select ‘format shape’. This will give you the normal Excel suite of customization options including fill colors, transparencies, reflections, gradients, 3d bevels, etc. etc.
Now, to answer your original question, to reverse the scale, the simplest method is not to change the colors directly (as they are custom shades using RGB numbers) but to use the format painter to copy the formats from one dial to another dial. To do this, ungroup the components in two separate widgets that are side-by-side (following the steps 1-3 above). Next, select one of the scale marker blocks with the desired color. Then click the ‘format painter’ (in the ‘home’ section of the top ribbon). You’ll notice the mouse arrow has changed into a small paintbrush. Then paint this format onto the target dial marker. You should end up with something like this with the second dial reversed.
Step #5
You now finally need to reverse steps 1-4 to tidy up your work...
5a) Right-click on one of the colored markers and select ‘group’ followed by ‘re-group’ to group the markers together into a single component.
5b) Send the markers back one layer (to bring the dial needle forward) by right-clicking and selecting ‘send to back’ followed by ‘send backwards’.
5c) Finally right-click the curved edge of the dashboard widget and re-group all of the sub-components into a single component (this makes it easier to move the dial around as a single widget).
I hope this makes sense and as always, please feel free to get back to us if you have any questions.
Also, to save you a bit of time and effort I've quickly reversed the dial colors in the six region dashboard you were working on which you can download below (I've also sent you the unlocked version by private forum message)..
(253.42 KiB) Downloaded 712 times
Good luck with your Excel Dashboard project.
ExcelDashboard Widgets
