Jorge Camoes’ Charts

Thanks for your interest in the Demographic Dashboard. Currently, there are three versions of the dashboard. To know more about each version please follow these links:

• VBA version: How to Create a Dashboard in Excel: The Demographic Dashboard;
• VBA-free version: Creating a VBA-free Excel dashboard;
• Lookup version: Performance vs flexibility in Excel: Demographic Dashboard Lookup Edition.

These posts deal directly with the dashboards, but through out the site you’ll find several posts that will help you with your own projects.

In this page I’ll tell you what the Demographic Dashboard is, why it can be be useful for your dashboard projects, what guarantees I offer when you buy the tutorials, and other practical stuff.

What is the Demographic Dashboard?

The Demographic Dashboard is an analysis tool that helps you to understand trends on population growth and age structure for each country in the world, from 1996 to 2050 (the data is available in the US Census Bureau).

There are several things that I pursued in this project:

• To show that you can use Excel as a BI tool and a cost-effective tool to create sophisticated dashboards;
• An inexpensive crash course in Excel dashboards. Several step-by-step screencast tutorials show you how the dashboard was designed and you can find many good ideas that you can use in your own projects. You don’t find many real world Excel examples where you can see how each function and formula is used and how it contributes to the overall result;
• Apply best practices in business information visualization. I am sorry, but you will not find in this dashboard the usual irrelevant charts, like gauges and speedometers (and pie charts, I may add). I like the minimalistic approach, standard Excel charts, no add-ins, no garish color, only efficient visualization practices (I said “no add-ins” because I really wanted to help people to use what they already have. But probably there will be a version using sparklines in the near future);
• Show how to implement interaction with dynamic charts. The more you interact with the data, the more you understand it;
• Interesting content. The content wasn’t randomly chosen. Population aging is a worldwide trend and is becoming a major issue in the developed world. The demographic transition from high mortality / high fertility to low mortality / low fertility affects the society as a whole. If you want to know more about this, please read the UN report The Diversity of Changing Population Age Structures in the World. The Demographic Dashboard is a great companion to this report.

Who is this product for?

Probably the Demographic Dashboard will be too complex for the absolute beginner and too simple for the Excel MVP. For the average Excel user interested in improving his Excel skills this will be a great resource.

Guarantees

I can guarantee you this:

• There is a 30 day, no questions asked, money back guarantee. If for some reason you are dissatisfied with the Demographic Dashboard just sent me a message and a full refund will be immediately processed;
• Transaction security: Transactions are processed by Paypal, and your credit card details are not disclosed to me (Paypal’s Privacy Policy);
• Investment security: You can download the file 5 times; if, for some reason, you lose the file, just send me a message and I’ll reactivate the link;
• E-mail Privacy: I will not share your e-mail address; you’ll be added to my mailing list and you may get a message from time to time regarding product updates and announcements but I’ll not spam you and an unsubscribe link will always be available.

Other practical stuff

The Demographic Dashboard is an Excel 2003 file and works best with screen resolutions of 1024 x 768 or higher. You don’t need an add-in or anything else that you can’t get from the Microsoft Office installation disks. The pack includes several screencasts that show you step-by-step how the dashboard was designed, the Excel file and n Access file with the base.

Click here to buy the Demographic Dashboard or use the side bar to get a link to the free versions (note: by downloading these files you are deemed to have accepted our disclaimer).

Final notes:

• There are far too many configurations and I can’t tell you for sure that the dashboard runs on your computer. It was tested in several Office 2003 installations and I had no problems, but to play safe I suggest you download the “Anonymous” Edition, test the Excel file and the screencast and report any issues. If everything runs smoothly, consider that small donation or download the HowTo Edition.
• If you have a screen resolution of 1024 x 768 and several toolbars, the dashboard or the screencasts may not fit in the available space. In this case, switch to full-screen mode in your browser and/or in Excel (it is available in View / Full Screen).
• There can be some issues with localized Excel versions and/or the Windows regional settings. Please let me know.
• There will be a FAQ section here, of needed.

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