Is there a way to make an interactive Floorplan map in excel?

Question

I have multiple buildings on my worksite, with multiple alarmed areas inside each building. I want to know if there is a way to import a picture of a floor plan of a building, AND line it up with the cell grid in order to highlight where specific rooms or multiple rooms are.

I DON'T want a world map, or a map of the USA. (Regardless of what Google seems to think)

And if it is possible to create such a thing in Excel, is there a way to create/highlight access routes on the map?

I've imported a floor plan image into Excel and adjusted transparency, but is there a way to get Excel to highlight certain sections of the map based off cell coordinates, in a way that would actually affect the image or do I need to make a complete overlay from inside Excel and then remove the image?

Answer 1

In Excel, you can't modify a picture to highlight any its section, but you can:

1. Prepare images (in highlight) of each section, import them and position accordingly. Then you can hide/unhide a section by VBA ActiveSheet.Shapes(Id).Visible = True ' or False, where Id is the index or name of a section image.
2. You can change the color of cells in required position

With [X12:Z14].Interior
  .Pattern = xlSolid
  .PatternColorIndex = xlAutomatic
  .Color = 255
  .TintAndShade = 0
  .PatternTintAndShade = 0
End With
With [W13:W14].Interior
  .Pattern = xlSolid
  .PatternColorIndex = xlAutomatic
  .Color = 255
  .TintAndShade = 0
  .PatternTintAndShade = 0
End With

3. You can use a shape instead of the section picture ActiveSheet.Shapes("Freedom: Shape 7").Visible = True ' or False:

Answer 2

If you're OK with using charts rather than sheets, you could try this:

• Upload an image of your floor plan as the chart area of the chart (XY Scatter)
• Adjust the left, right, top, and bottom offsets OR adjust the axis extents until your floor plan aligns with the axes.
• Save door/alarm locations as X,Y coordinate pairs on another sheet, and plot them as points.
• When an alarm is triggered, change the color of the door's point to red or some other formatting to draw attention.

The main reason I suggest a chart is because the X,Y plotting will be handled for you once you provide coordinates. Yes, Excel sheets are effectively grids and you could plot on them, but why not leverage the built-in way to plot data (and images).

Again, this can only be a general explanation because there aren't many constraints in the your question, but here's an image of my idea. See a few door locations marked with dots, and a door with an alarm triggered in a larger, red display: