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I am attempting to create a wind rose graph, i.e.



My data is wind speed and cardinal wind direction in separate columns:

Wind (mph)  Wind Direction
3.66        SE
2.69        SE
2.62        SW
2.76        SW
2.11        NW
3.13        NW
3.55        SW
3.62        W

My final goal is to actually create the graph with a VBA macro, but I am unsure how to even create the graph manually. I can, if need be, convert the cardinal directions to degrees.

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I assume this is next to impossible without external software to create the graph. I ended up creating the graph in PHP. –  Patrick Jan 24 '11 at 17:54
I got curious and googled a little bit: social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/excelchart/thread/… –  molgar Feb 21 '11 at 16:57

4 Answers 4

up vote 3 down vote accepted

You can create something basic much like your first sample using a standard Excel "filled radar chart". You'll need to summarise your data into a table like this - make sure the higher-valued column comes first. It can probably be done just with some "countif" formulas from your input data, not even VBA.

    H   M   L
N   5   4   1
NE  7   5   2
E   9   6   3
SE  11  5   4
S   10  6   5
SW  5   5   4
W   4   3   3
NW  2   1   2

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I researched and believe that the only way to create a wind rose graph in excel 2007 is by using external programs that then import the image into excel.

Since I was seeking a way to create the wind rose completely within excel using a VBA macro, I believe this problem to be currently unsolvable.

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This site has software you can download to do this in Excel. I didn't try it, but from the user manual it looks like what you want. Bonus: available in in English and Greek! ;-)

This site suggests using R to create the graph. R is statistical computation and graphics package. I've seen some nice output from it. I suspect it will require some work before you will be able to use it efficiently.

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I had a good search around and found instructions on this site:


Unfortunately you have to pay, but its only 99p.

Wind rose

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