Excel Video 511 3D Maps Region Map

A region map is a great way to see your data summarized by geographic region, like a zip code. Watch Excel Video 511 to see how to make a region map work for your data. The first thing to note is that unlike heat maps, a region map will let you use categories with your data. I’ll walk through those category options, but my data doesn’t work very well with categories in a region map. Try your data to see if categories work for you. If not, column or bubble maps might be a better way to display categories. There are ways to combine multiple maps in what Excel calls a Tour. We’ll talk more about tours in future Excel Videos.

The great thing about a region map is that the shading corresponds to a geographic region. It’s easy to see your data organized by zip code, for example. It’s also easy to change the color of the shading and the intensity of the shading in the layer options.

Finally, if you need a region for your map that isn’t defined geographically, you can import a custom region file to create the geography you need. A custom region file is a .KML or .SHP file that are essentially custom polygons. Once you have the custom file imported, you can use the custom regions like you would other standard regions. You might use this if you had sales representatives assigned to specific areas and wanted the region map to compare sales representatives.

We have now covered the basic types of 3D Maps available in Excel. Stay tuned. We’ll walk through the 3D Maps ribbon and highlight major options and features in the next Excel Videos. Thanks for watching.