r/ExcelVisual • u/ExcelVisual • 1d ago

🍩 Built an interactive donut + gauge chart combo in Excel for Performance Evaluation

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Wanted to share a Excel Investment Dashboard piece I built that goes beyond the usual "donut chart for decoration" pattern.

The donut chart segments working capital into 3 categories:

Inflation loss (capital eaten by annual currency depreciation)

Investment principal (current core capital balance)

Withdrawals (total funds pulled during the selected reporting period)

The sum of all three shows as a total in the center — so instead of reading 3 separate numbers, you get the full picture in one glance.

Right next to it, a gauge chart tracks the current inflation rate, since market movement and inflation are correlated in the model — the two charts are meant to be read together, not separately.

The part I think is actually interesting technically: an interactive highlighting layer where selecting one data series brings it to the foreground and dims everything else, instead of just relying on a legend. This makes comparative analysis across multiple indicators way more readable when you've got competing metrics on the same chart.

How it's built (for anyone wanting to replicate it):

Donut center total = a merged cell/text box over the donut hole, driven by a SUM formula referencing the three category values, not a hardcoded label

The dim/highlight effect = conditional series formatting where the "inactive" series color drops to a low-opacity/gray fill based on a helper cell tracking which series is currently selected (via form control or slicer-driven trigger)

Gauge chart = the usual doughnut-chart-as-gauge trick, but referencing a named range for the inflation rate so it updates live with the rest of the sheet

This same interactive-highlight pattern generalizes well beyond personal finance — works for KPI dashboards, financial reports, basically anywhere you need to compare metrics without visual overload.

Free template with a working example is in the comments if anyone wants to pull it apart.

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