24.9 3D Maps

The last thing we will cover in this lesson is a brief introduction to another tool that we have access to in Excel, 3D maps. Of course, your data has to include location data, for example, latitude and longitude. If you have additional data like dates or times, you can also visualize this data over time. Our data includes location information and date information about the orders, so it’s a decent fit for providing an overview of this functionality.

On the Insert menu, select the 3D Map option. It will likely take a minute to load. When it does, you should see a world and some fields on a layout that looks like the following.

Since we have a data model associated with our workbook, the 3D map has access to those fields. We need to tell which fields in our data are associated with the Location, Height, Category, and Time.

For the location, select the Latitude and Longitude associated with each of the customers. Next, we need to select what fields those map to by using the drop-downs to the right of each field. You should see the option to map those to Latitude and Longitude, respectively. This may seem silly but allows you to map field names that might not be named exactly like the built-in options and thus provides a bit more flexibility.

Next, add Gross Profit as the field associated with height. The default chart illustrates the data using columns that emerge from the latitude and longitude of the customer. However, you can change how the map is displayed by selecting a different visualization option. For this data, I prefer the Heat Map visualization option.

You can also adjust the layer options to change the intensity of how the data is displayed. For heat map visualizations, you can change the color scale and the radius of influence. Notice how we can easily identify areas of the country that produced the most gross profit for the products in our data set. That is powerful.

By adding the Order Date to the Time field, the maps will show an animated version of the map as orders change over time. There are a variety of other options that you can play with as well. We can also grab ahold of the world and rotate it around to different angles. We can then get rid of the legend and the date/time display on the screen to declutter the space. If we hit the Play button at the bottom, we can see the growth over time based on the range of dates that we input. We now have an interactive experience. It did not take long to do, but it produced an impressive display.

Using maps like these can help us understand where the different markets are that we are currently in and those that may have potential. This can impact important business decisions, such as where we might locate warehouses and where to spend our advertising budget.

Obviously, the content in this lesson is very powerful, and knowing how to use Power Pivot will make you even more valuable at work and in your internships. Find opportunities to apply these principles when you can.