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All articles with 'charting' Tag

Make info-graphics with shape fill technique [Charting Tip]

Published on Jul 11, 2019 in Charts and Graphs
Make info-graphics with shape fill technique [Charting Tip]

This is a quick, fun and elegant way to make impressive charts. You can easily create info-graphic style charts in Excel using shape fill technique. Something like this:

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5 simple rules for making awesome column charts

Published on May 9, 2019 in Charts and Graphs
5 simple rules for making awesome column charts

For every column chart that is done right, there are a dozen that get messed up. That is why lets talk about 5 simple rules for making awesome column charts.

Tip: Same rules apply for bar charts too.

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Source vs. Use of Funds – 14 charting alternatives

Published on Apr 10, 2019 in Charts and Graphs
Source vs. Use of Funds – 14 charting alternatives

Let’s say you manage a fund or charity. You get money from various places and you use that money for various reasons. How do you tell the story of source vs. uses of funds? In this post, let’s review 14 charting options. Source vs. Use of funds – Sample Data for this problem Let’s say […]

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Create impressive dashboard tiles in Excel

Create impressive dashboard tiles in Excel

If you want to tell the story of how your business / project / charity / thing is going on, then making a dashboard is the best way to go about it. Dashboards can combine heaps of data, insights and messages in to one concise format that fits on to a desktop or table or mobile screen.

But let’s be honest. Creating them in Excel is a lot of work. Even after spending hours on them, they might still look meh. So, let me share a trick to make your dashboards look snazzy (without compromising on insights per inch).

Create dashboard tiles, something like above.

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Quickly change charts from one to another with this trick

Published on Feb 5, 2019 in Charts and Graphs, Quick Tip
Quickly change charts from one to another with this trick

We all change minds. Heck, I just did it with the leading line. I thought something else, but went with what you just read. So why must Excel charts be set in stone? Let’s say you made some charts and want to quickly second guess your selection. How to change Excel chart easily? Sure, you […]

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Make funky and creative hand-drawn chart in Excel – Quick tutorial

Published on Aug 16, 2018 in Charts and Graphs
Make funky and creative hand-drawn chart in Excel – Quick tutorial

Charts are great way to tell story about what is going on in your business. But they also feel a bit too impersonal and meh. How about adding your personality to them? I don’t mean making them tall, dark and pretty. I mean using hand-drawing style to make them pop out. Something like above example of hand-drawn chart.

The best thing is, You don’t need to actually draw these charts by hand. We can use a powerful charting trick to get these charts automatically generated (and linked) to your data. Interested? Read on to learn how to create hand-drawn charts in Excel.

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12 Steps to learn Excel and become awesome @ work in 2018

Published on Aug 7, 2018 in Learn Excel
12 Steps to learn Excel and become awesome @ work in 2018

Obviously, everywhere you look this week, you find advice on how to do better this year.

Well, you don’t have to wait for a new year to become awesome at your work, any day is new year for the rest of your life.

So, today I want to share 12 steps to learn Excel and becoming awesome. But first I have a secret to confess…,

I think becoming awesome in Excel useless.

What we really want is, to become awesome in our work. Since we spend a lot of time using Excel (and other office software), knowing how to use these better can have a huge impact on how we do our work.

In that spirit, lets look at 12 steps to learn Excel so you become awesome in your work.

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60 sports in six charts

Published on May 14, 2018 in Charts and Graphs
60 sports in six charts

On twitter I follow many charting and visualization related accounts. One of them is @Andy Kriebel, who runs Makeover Monday. The idea is simple. Every Monday they publish a data-set and ask the community to visualize. Last Monday (7th May, 2018), they have published about toughest sport by skill data. This categorizes 60 sports by 10 skill categories to find out which sport is the toughest. Over the weekend, Andy posted a summary of all toughest sport viz entries. Many of the entries are made in Tableau. I thought it would be a fun challenge to re-create some of these charts in Excel. The result is this post. 60 sports in 6 charts. Check out the charts and download workbook to learn more.

First four charts are re-creations of Tableau designs. Last two are mine.

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Top 5 keyboard shortcuts for Excel Charts

Published on Apr 24, 2018 in Charts and Graphs, Keyboard Shortcuts
Top 5 keyboard shortcuts for Excel Charts

We all know that learning a few keyboard shortcuts can speedup your Excel game. Most pro users rely on a handful shortcuts when working with large spreadsheets. But when it comes to charting, we automatically reach for mouse. But do you know that you can use few simple shortcuts to do most day to day chart related things?

Ready for top 5 keyboard shortcuts for Excel charts? Read on.

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Visualizing Commonwealth games performance – Interactive chart

Published on Apr 13, 2018 in Charts and Graphs, Power Query
Visualizing Commonwealth games performance – Interactive chart

The 2018 edition of Commonwealth games are on for a week now. Both of my homes – India and New Zealand have been doing so well. Naturally, I wanted to gather games data and make something fun and creative from it. Here is my attempt to amuse you on this Friday.

Looks interesting? Want to know how to make something like this on your own? Then read on…

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Histograms & Pareto charts in Excel – tutorial, tips and downloadable template

Published on Oct 5, 2017 in Charts and Graphs
Histograms & Pareto charts in Excel – tutorial, tips and downloadable template

Time for some statistics and charting fun. Let’s learn all about histograms and Pareto charts in Excel 2016. You will learn

  • What, why and when?
  • How to set up and customize histograms
  • How to use Pareto charts?
  • How to create dynamic histograms?
  • Creating histograms in old Excel (2013 or prior versions)

Sounds interesting? Let’s get started then.

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Awesome chart to visualize Salary Increases for 3,500+ people [Tutorial]

Published on Aug 17, 2017 in Charts and Graphs, R programming
Awesome chart to visualize Salary Increases for 3,500+ people [Tutorial]

Game for some charting awesomeness?

Off late, I have been doing a lot of data analysis and visualization on performance ratings, salary hike, gender pay equality etc. Today let me share you an awesome way to visualize massive amounts of data.

Scenario: Your organization of 3,686 people recently went thru annual performance ratings & review process. At the end of it, everyone was offered some salary increase (from $0 to $24,000 per year). You have 7 business groups. How do you tell the story of all these salary hikes in one chart?

How about the one above?

Ready to know how to create this in Excel? Read on.

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Employee Performance Panel Charts – Excel vs. R [video]

Published on Aug 10, 2017 in Charts and Graphs, R programming
Employee Performance Panel Charts – Excel vs. R [video]

Recently, I had to make a bunch of panel charts. After wrangling with Excel (and a tiny bit of VBA) to create them, I wondered if we are suffering needlessly by being too loyal to Excel. I switched to R and could create these panel charts in almost no time (well, first I had to learn how to pivot the data using dplyr). Today, let me share the experience.

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Joyplot in Excel

Joyplot in Excel

Over on Twitter, I came across this beautiful chart, aptly titled – Joyplot. It is the kind of chart that makes you all curious and awed. So I did what any Excel nerd would do. Recreated it in Excel of course. This post takes you thru the process.

Take a look at final outcome above. Read on to learn more.

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Start your bar charts from zero – Excel geeks screaming at you from mountain top

Published on May 15, 2017 in Charts and Graphs
Start your bar charts from zero – Excel geeks screaming at you from mountain top

Here is a simple but vital charting rule.

Start your bar (or column) charts from zero.

To illustrate why you should do this, let me share a personal example.

Over the weekend, the Jon Peltier visited Wellington. He is staying with Jeff (who occasionally guest blogs on Chandoo.org). On Sunday, we all decided to hike up a small mountain near my house for a leisurely family picnic.

While on the top of the mountain, Jo (my wife) took a few pics of us three Excel geeks.  As we were standing on a sloping mountain face this is how the pictures look.

Looking at the picture on left, you would confidently say that I am way shorter than other two. But picture on right tells a different story.

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