Sparkline or Microchart is a tiny little chart that you can place on dashboards, reports or presentations to provide rich visualization without loosing much space. In excel 2010, MS introduced a beautiful feature for creating sparklines from data in spreadsheets. For earlier versions of Excel (that is 2007 and before) there is no native support for sparkline visualizations. Thankfully, there are several good add-ins and open source projects (Fabrice’s fantastic Sparklines for Excel is one) to create small charts in Excel 2007 and earlier.
[Related: 7 ways to create micro-charts in Excel]
But almost all the ways of creating sparklines in Excel involve either installing an add-in or running a macro or violently formatting a regular line chart. While these methods work fine for a seasoned sparkline maker, what about you and me, who need a sparkline once in a while?
That is why I created an Excel Sparkline Template. Using this template is as simple as eating a donut. You just enter the data and sparkline will be automatically generated. No macros, no add-ins. Just copy the sparkline(s) and paste them as images wherever you want. And you are good to go.
Download the Excel Sparkline Template:
Click here to download the Excel 2007 version of sparkline template [mirror]
Click here to download the Excel 2003 version of sparkline template [mirror]
How this sparkline template works?
- The file is capable of generating 10 sparklines, 10 sparklines with high, low points highlighted and 10 win-loss charts.
- Each sparkline can contain up to 40 data points. The charts are dynamic, so as you enter more data or remove data points, the chart gets adjusted automatically (related: Automatically change charts when source data grows / shrinks using OFFSET and Named Ranges).
- The charts are standard line charts and column charts re-sized to look like sparklines. All the formatting (like grid lines, labels, axis, title, backgrounds etc.) is removed and only the line / columns are retained.
Do you like this sparkline chart template?
I hope you like this sparkline template. Do tell me how you are planning to use this template. If you use a commercial or free add-in to get sparklines, share your experience using comments.
23 Responses to “Learn Top 10 Excel Features”
What it looks like if excel without formula?? 🙂
It would be not excel it would just be fancy tables in which you could just use power point. (Chandoo) would Access be an alternative?
Awesome piece of work!!!
Great article.
Chandoo - my biggest interest in the article was the awesome word-graphic at the top - where did you go to get it done into a shape?
@Rich.. thank you. I used http://www.tagxedo.com/ to generate this word cloud. I took all the comments in the original post, pasted them in tagxedo website and set up the shape etc.
Awesome Chandoo.. You need always needs coffee to start up with. BTW , how did u created the Heart Shaped picture filled with High Repetitive text in it .. Please put it on your Next blog ...
Chandoo, good article. I’ve added a link to it from Connexion – our collection of the most useful and interesting spreadsheet-related articles from the web. See http://www.i-nth.com/resources/connexion
Hi,
Just one small question. Where the hell have been I in the past for not discovering this website sooner?
I've lost a job interview recently where even though I had the subject knowledge, I was not upto their mark in Excel.
Thank you for all the free tips, guidance and for creating this forum environment.
[PS: I've just been through the site for the 1st time, and have signed up for the newsletter. You can expect pretty stupid questions from me soon]
Hy Chandoo, you always inspire me with to explore something new in excel. This data structure table is only for excel 2007 or compatible to 2010. I recently installed latest excel version 2013 in my System and experience problems regarding operating according to previous one. I'm waiting your article relates to that excel version.
Thanks
Awesome article Mr. Chandoo and that is a awesome heart shaped pic you created. Great tips as well.
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Chandoo is awesome..
Thanks, i got better, And i always get 90.50 in my grade card but now i get 96.50 i improved because of the tutorials you gave, Thank You Very Much Chandoo Guy.
Hi chandoo, i am intersted in seeing the video or step by step done procedure of analysing the comments and presenting in the data percentage steps. I think this one would be first step in finding out how generally happens data calculation. Thank you.
As well i would like to know how to get that black shape art of your face which i see in chandoo. I am interested in making it for me.
Nice to see the features considered by Excel users to be most useful. It might be a good idea to also analyze StackOverflow Excel questions to see what keywords appear most often.
Here are my top 10 Excel Features (for advanced users):
http://www.analystcave.com/excel-10-top-excel-features/
Thanks a ton for this it totally helped with my homework ????
Very good effort
Thank you for this. Lots of learning in the links you've provided for this septuagenarian.
Pls send me new post
Dude, your humor ? ?
Loved your work.
Hello Sir,
I am Sanjeev Khakre and i from Indore City, India , I am your big follower and i have watch your videos and learnt a lots of excel trick or function and many more . thanks so much for all of your excellent support.
Your excel knowledge is real awesome.
Thanks
Sanjeev
Your work is excellent but pls willing to know more details about the features of microsoft excel
Chandoo Would Access be a better alternative than VB?