A good chart tells a story. It is as simple as that.
Here is a fantastic example of what a good chart is. See the Time spent eating vs. National obesity rate chart below
It takes may be 5 seconds to understand what the chart is. And then you know the story. What is more interesting is, it instigates the readers curiosity to ask questions and understand the data. For eg.
- Q: Why obesity is high in countries where they spend less time eating?
- May be because of the fast food
- Q: What are the Turkish people eating for 160 minutes a day?
- May be they like the turkey cold. Okay, bad joke
The chart itself is very simple and easy. But it brilliantly juxtaposes two pieces of data: Obesity rates in countries and Time spent eating per day, to tell a story.
Are your charts telling a story?
Hat tip to Marginal Revolution for the chart.
More charting principles: Why KISS is important when it comes to charts | Vizooalization – 5 Lessons from zoo on visualization
11 Responses to “Use Alt+Enter to get multiple lines in a cell [spreadcheats]”
@Chandoo:
One more useful trick.......
In a column you have no. of data in rows and need to copy in the next row from the previous row, no need to go for the previous rows but entering Alt + down arrow, you will get the list of data, (in asending order), entered in the previous rows...
This is another great tip. I use this all the time to make sense of some *very* long formulas. As soon as the formula is debugged I remove the break.
Great tip Chandoo!
I use this feature often and it has even gotten the, "how did you do that" response.
Thanks!
@Ketan: Alt+down arrow is an awesome tip. I never knew it and now I am using it everyday.
@Jorge, Tony: Agree... 🙂
[...] Day 1: Insert Line Breaks in a Cell [...]
how can we merge a two sheet.
excellent idea. Chandoo you are genious
Hi chandoo,
I have used ctrl+enter to break the cell. But I did not get the result.
Please tell me how can i break the cell in multiple lines.
Hi, Ranveer,
Its not Ctrl+enter to break the cell, use Alt+Enter to make it happen.
hi Chandoo....
how we can use Alt+Enter in multiple rows at the same time please reply hurry i have lot of work and have no time and i m stuck in this. 🙁
Alt+J worked once 🙁
So I found another more reliable way:
=SUBSTITUTE(A2,CHAR(13),"")
Where A2 is the cell that contains the line breaks which the code for it is CHAR(13). It will replace it with whatever inside the ""