Is your (chart’s) underwear showing?

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When I read Is your website’s underwear showing?, I couldn’t control the urge to write this one.

So the big screaming friday question everyone…

Is your chart’s underwear showing?

What is my chart’s underwear? you may ask.

My dear reader, it is the background color (that grayish shade excel adds by default). Also commonly known as one of the chart junk (no pun intended).

It is surprising how many people leave the default background color on, and yet spend countless hours working the rest.

What difference does it make?

It makes a hell of a lot of difference. Just set the background color to white and tell me if your eyes haven’t felt better.

Remember, only superman can get away showing his underwear. But, again he doesn’t have to work on spreadsheets and powerpoint like you and me. So, lets just hide that ugly background color. Ok?

flickr superman image credit to videoplacebo

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3 Responses to “How-to create an elegant, fun & useful Excel Tracker – Step by Step Tutorial”

  1. Malani says:

    Hi Chandoo,
    I am responsible for tracking when church reports are submitted on time or not and the variations from the due date for submission.
    Here is the Scenario;
    The due date for the submission of monthly reports is on the 5th of each month. and I would like to know how many reports have been submitted on time (i.e, those that have been submitted on or before the due date) I would also want to track those reports that have been submitted after the due date has passed.
    How can I create such a tracker?

  2. Carl says:

    Hi Chandoo,
    I am a member of your excel school.
    I was trying to create SOP Tracker I follow all your steps but I keep this error below.

    The list source must be a delimited list, or a reference to a single row or cell.

    I try looking on YouTube for answer but no luck.

    can you help on this?

    thanks
    Carl.

  3. Rakesh says:

    Dear Mr. Chando,

    Rakesh, I'm working in a private company in the UAE. Recently, I'm struggling to get more details about the staff sick, annual, unpaid, and leaves. I would like to get a tracker in excel. Could you please help me in this situation?

    I also watching your videos in YouTube. i hope you can help me on this situation.

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