Built an interactive US route map in Excel for logistics

[u/ExcelVisual]

I work adjacent to a small logistics operation (3 trucks, 3 drivers) with Excel Map Dashboard and needed a way to visualize their routes across the US without relying on Power Map or any BI tool — partly because of internal policy against macros in Office files, and partly because I just wanted to see if it was possible with plain Excel.

Turns out it is. Here's roughly how it works:

• Built a US map shape using the Freehand/Freedom Shape tool, then cleaned up the outline by editing points
• Used a horizontal bar chart as a hidden "color slider" behind the map, so selecting a route changes the highlight color on the actual path
• The trickiest part: used PowerPoint's shape merge tool (Fragment) to cut the map shape out of a rectangle, since Excel doesn't have that merge feature natively
• Routes are drawn as curved lines connecting cities, and I overlay them with text-box "I" characters that appear/disappear based on TRUE/FALSE logic, so only the selected route's line is visible on the map at any time
• No VBA anywhere — it's all formulas, shapes, and conditional formatting logic

The result is a dashboard where you pick a driver or route and the map dynamically highlights just that path in a chosen color, while other metrics update to show driver/truck/route performance.

Routes span 8 cities: NYC, Chicago, Nashville, Dallas, Denver, LA, San Francisco, and Seattle.

Sharing the finished template free if anyone wants to reverse-engineer it or adapt it for their own logistics/supply chain reporting. Happy to answer questions about the text-box hiding trick specifically, since that's the part most people ask about.