Now that there are a fair number of project posts, I thought it might be good to post templates for each of them.
They’re all available on Google docs. I used formatting to clearly identify various elements.
- Yellow background: This cell was/should be used to create the chart.
- Bold, italic font: formulas you might be interested in looking at.
- Blue background: This cell contains an instructional note, and doesn’t need to be duplicated in your actual project.
The templates are all designed to be self-explanatory, but I’m including some particular notes about each one below.
Project 1: a simple budget (Template)
This is just a very basic template for a household budget with two accounts — a checking account and a credit card. It shows all of the formulas described in that project. I also added another line to what was described in the project… paying off the credit card from the checking account.
Project 2: bar charts & library stacks (Template)
In the project description I said I “added up” space available in each set of shelves, but I didn’t say how. You can see the formula in column “I”.
You may notice that there are two “break” lines in each break. That’s because in Excel 2007 I noticed that it was showing every other label (1, 3, 5, etc.). This often happens so that the horizontal axis doesn’t become an unreadable mess of crowded and/or tiny labels. By having two lines labeled “break” I could guarantee that one label would appear for that break. Unfortunately that doesn’t work in Google Spreadsheets, which apparently just skips labels that have a value of zero.
Project 3: pie charts & household budgets (Template)
This template has multiple worksheets. I created one for each chart I showed in the original project. Navigate between them by clicking on the tabs at the bottom. In this case the fact that Google skips blank lines works to our advantage.
Project 4: line charts & debt payments (Template)
This one also multiple sheets. The first worksheet has everything calculated monthly, which is more accurate. The second one has a yearly calculation, which is less accurate but might be easier to deal with in certain situations. If, for example, you were looking at a 60-year mortgage instead of an 11-year credit card debt then you might prefer to have 60 rows instead of 720.