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All articles with 'charting' Tag

In-cell 5 star chart – tutorial & template

Published on Aug 15, 2015 in Charts and Graphs, Excel Howtos
In-cell 5 star chart – tutorial & template

Whenever we talk about product ratings & customer satisfaction, 5 star ratings come to our mind. Today, let’s learn how to create a simple & elegant 5 star in-cell chart in Excel. Something like above.

Read on to learn how to create the above chart.

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Work with charts faster using selection pane & select object tools [quick video tip]

Published on Aug 14, 2015 in Charts and Graphs, Excel Howtos

Working with multiple charts (or drawing shapes / images) can be a very slow process. But here is a secret to boost your productivity.

Use selection pane & select object tools

Selection Pane & Select Objects?

If you have never heard of these, don’t worry. These are 2 very powerful features hidden in Excel. Once you know how to unlock them, you will never look back.

How to use selection pane & select object tools to work with charts faster – Video

In this video, understand how to use these powerful features to work with charts faster.

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Make bar charts in original order of data for improved readability [charting tip]

Published on Aug 10, 2015 in Charts and Graphs
Make bar charts in original order of data for improved readability [charting tip]

To make friends in a new town hit the bars – Old saying.
To make sense of a new data-set, make bar charts – New saying.

Bar charts (or column charts if you like your data straight up) are vital in data analysis. They are easy to make. But one problem. By default, a bar chart show the original data in reverse order.

See the above example.

Unfortunately, we humans read from top to bottom, not the other way around.

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Use shapes to enhance your Excel charts [tip]

Published on Aug 8, 2015 in Charts and Graphs
Use shapes to enhance your Excel charts [tip]

Here is a simple way to enhance your Excel charts – use shapes & pictures in your charts.

We will learn how to create something like above.

Looks interesting? Read on…

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CP041: 6 charts you’ll see in hell – v2.0

Published on Aug 6, 2015 in Chandoo.org Podcast Sessions, Charts and Graphs
CP041: 6 charts you’ll see in hell – v2.0

In the 41st session of Chandoo.org podcast, Let’s take a trip to data hell and meet 6 ugly, clumsy, confusing charts. I am revisiting a classic Chandoo.org article – 6 Charts you will see in hell.

What is in this session?

In this podcast,

  • Quick announcement about Awesome August
  • 6 charts you should avoid
  • 3D charts
  • Pie / donut charts with too many slices
  • Too much data
  • Over formatting
  • Complex charts
  • Charts that don’t tell a story
  • Conclusions
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Shading an area chart with different colors for up & down movements [case study]

Published on Jul 29, 2015 in Charts and Graphs
Shading an area chart with different colors for up & down movements [case study]

We all know that area charts are great for understanding how a list of values have changed over time. Today, let’s learn how to create an area chart that shows different colors for upward & downward movements.

The inspiration for this came from a recent chart published in Wall Street Journal about Chinese stock markets.

We will try to create a similar chart using Excel. We are going to create the above chart in Excel.

Looks interesting? Read on…

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CP038: Data to Ink Ratio – What is it, How to optimize it, Techniques & Discussion

Published on Jul 9, 2015 in Chandoo.org Podcast Sessions, Charts and Graphs
CP038: Data to Ink Ratio – What is it, How to optimize it, Techniques & Discussion

In the 38th session of Chandoo.org podcast, Let’s optimize data to ink ratio of your charts.

What is in this session?

In this podcast,

  • Announcements
  • What is Data to Ink Ratio?
  • Obvious ways to optimize Data to Ink Ratio
  • More ways to optimize Data to Ink ratio
  • Highlighting what is important
  • Conclusions
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Are you an analyst? Use these 25 shortcuts & tricks to boost your productivity

Published on Jul 7, 2015 in Keyboard Shortcuts, Learn Excel
Are you an analyst? Use these 25 shortcuts & tricks to boost your productivity

Analyst’s life is busy. We have to gather data, clean it up, analyze it, dig the stories buried in it, present them, convince our bosses about the truth, gather more evidence, run tests, simulations or scenarios, share more insights, grab a cup of coffee and start all over again with a different problem.

So today let me share with you 25 shortcuts, productivity hacks and tricks to help you be even more awesome.

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15 Quick & powerful ways to analyze business data

Published on Jul 1, 2015 in Analytics, Charts and Graphs, Learn Excel
15 Quick & powerful ways to analyze business data

Here is a situation all too familiar.

You are looking at a spreadsheet full of data. You need to analyze and tell a story about it. You have little time. You don’t know where to start.

Today let me share 15 quick, simple & very powerful ways to analyze business data. Ready? Let’s get started.

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CP036: How to do trend analysis using Excel?

Published on Jun 11, 2015 in Chandoo.org Podcast Sessions, Charts and Graphs
CP036: How to do trend analysis using Excel?

In the 36th session of Chandoo.org podcast, Let’s follow the trend.

What is in this session?

In this podcast,

  • A quick trip to down under
  • What is trend analysis
  • 4 types of common trends
    • linear
    • curve
    • cyclical
    • strange
  • Doing trend analysis in Excel – the process
  • How to use trend analysis results
  • Conclusions
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Changing stubborn opinions with visualizations [case study]

Published on May 29, 2015 in Charts and Graphs
Changing stubborn opinions with visualizations [case study]

We, analysts take pride in the fact that we tell stories. But what if you have a boss, client or colleague who wouldn’t buy the story?

This is a problem we face often. Let’s say your boss has stubborn opinion about something, like more advertising leads to more sales. You know the data doesn’t support this theory. But how do you change your boss’ mind?

Here is an interesting way, showcased in NY Times recently.

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Use arrow keys to select small, unreachable chart series [quick tip]

Published on Apr 30, 2015 in Charts and Graphs
Use arrow keys to select small, unreachable chart series [quick tip]

Here is a fairly annoying problem.

Imagine a chart showing both sales & customer data. Sales numbers are large and customer numbers are small. So when you make a chart with both of these, selecting the smaller series (customers) becomes very difficult.

In such cases, you can use arrow keys – as shown above.

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CP032: Rules for making legendary column charts

Published on Apr 2, 2015 in Chandoo.org Podcast Sessions, Charts and Graphs
CP032: Rules for making legendary column charts

In the 32nd session of Chandoo.org podcast, let’s make legendary column charts.

What is in this session?

Column charts are everywhere. As analysts, we are expected to create flawless, strikingly beautiful & insightful column charts all the time. Do you know the simple rules that can help you create legendary column charts?

That is our topic for this podcast session.

In this podcast, you will learn

  • Few personal announcements
  • Rule 0: Start at zero
  • Rule 1: Sort the chart
  • Rule 2: Slap a title on it
  • Rule 3: Axis + grid-lines vs. Lables
  • Rule 4: Moderate formatting
  • Conclusions
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Celebrate Holi with this colorful Excel file

Published on Mar 6, 2015 in Charts and Graphs, VBA Macros
Celebrate Holi with this colorful Excel file

Today is Holi, the festival of colors in India. It is a fun festival where people smear each other with colors, water balloons, tomatoes and sometimes rotten eggs. This year we wanted to play with only water guns, but kids vetoed that idea vehemently. So we ended up driving to my sister-in-law’s place to play with colors (there were no rotten eggs or tomatoes, thankfully).

Let me smear a few colors on you

I would love to splash a jug full of color water on you and say Happy Holi. But the internets have not advanced thus far. So I am going to give you the next best option.

An Excel workbook to play holi

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CP031: Invisibility Tricks – How to make things disappear in Excel?

Published on Mar 5, 2015 in Chandoo.org Podcast Sessions
CP031: Invisibility Tricks – How to make things disappear in Excel?

In the 31st session of Chandoo.org podcast, let’s disappear.

What is in this session?

Spreadsheets are complex things. They have outputs, calculation tabs, inputs, VBA code, from controls, charts, pivot tables and occasional picture of hello kitty. But when it comes to making a workbook production ready, you may want to hide away few things so it looks tidy.

That is our topic for this podcast session.

In this podcast, you will learn

  • Quick announcements first anniversary of our podcast etc.
  • Hiding cells, rows, columns & sheets
  • Hiding chart data points
  • On/off effect with form controls, conditional formatting
  • Making objects, charts, pictures disappear
  • Disabling grid-lines, formula bar & headings
  • Hiding things in print
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