How to make a heatmap in Excel?

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Burger - 12 Dec 2007 13:33 GMT

Dear All,

I would like to construct a heatmap in Excel. In other words, a figure with
two axes and each cell has a certain color based on the value for that cell
(e.g., the higher the score, the darker the color). In example of such a
figure can be found at:
http://david.abcc.ncifcrf.gov/helps/2D_Introduction_files/classification_hea
tmap.jpg

Is this possible in Excel?

Thanks in advance!

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Bob Phillips - 12 Dec 2007 14:10 GMT

You could use the cell colour as a conditional colour, that is using the
data as the map itself..

Two problems, conditional formatting only supports 3 conditions, so you
would have to use VBA event code.

The colour palette is restricted to 56 colours, not giving the shading you
want. You could customise the colours and get the effect that you want.

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Bob

(there's no email, no snail mail, but somewhere should be gmail in my addy)

> Dear All,
>
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> Thanks in advance!

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Dr Alexander J Turner - 12 Dec 2007 15:10 GMT

I'd write a scripting macro to do this. Open up the Excel workbook from
vbscript and assign the colours to the cells that way. You could make it
so you can drag a non-coloured workbook file onto a script, the script
opens it, looks at the values in the cells and sets the background
colours based on those values.

If there are not enough colour in Excel's pallet, then I guess you could
look to using image files as cell backgrounds or something.

Please check out: http://nerds-central.blogspot.com and my book http://
nerds-central.blogspot.com/2007/12/baby-steps-how-to-become-excel-god.html

> Dear All,
>
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>
> Thanks in advance!

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