Of all the charting features in Excel, Sparklines are my absolute favorite. These bite-sized graphs can fit in a cell and show powerful insights. Edward Tufte coined the term sparkline and defined it as,
intense, simple, word-sized graphics
Edward Tufte
Sparklines (often called as micro-charts) add rich visualization capability to tabular data without taking too much space. This page provides a complete tutorial on Excel sparklines along with 5 secret tips.
What is a sparkline?
A Sparkline is a small chart that is aligned with rows of some tabular data and usually shows trend information.
Here is an example of sparklines in a project team status report.
Excel Sparklines Tutorial – 3 steps
Creating sparklines in Excel is very easy. You follow 3 very simple steps to get beautiful sparklines in an instant.
- Select the data from which you want to make a sparkline.
- Go to Insert > Sparkline and select the type of sparkline (you have 3 options – line, column and win-loss chart)
- Specify a target cell where you want the sparkline to be placed
- Optional: Format the sparkline if you want.
Here is a short screen-cast showing you how a sparkline is created.
Types of Sparklines in Excel:
There are 3 basic types of sparklines in Excel 2010. They are,
- Line chart
- Column chart
- Win-loss chart (useful for showing a bunch of wins & losses denoted by 1s and -1s)
Sparkline Formatting and Options – Explored
Whenever you select a cell with sparkline in it, you will find a new ribbon called as “Sparklines – Design” ribbon. This is where all the formatting options for sparklines are included. Some of the key formatting / customization options available are,
- Change the sparkline type – between line, column and win/loss
- Change the source data / target cells of sparkline
- Set different colors for first point, last point, highest & lowest points (applicable for column and line chart types)
- Set axis options (show / hide axis, set min and max value for vertical axis, set axis type to date axis etc.)
- Group / un-group a bunch of sparklines (you can change formatting options, axis settings en-masse when you group sparklines)
- Remove sparklines
Sparklines & Missing Data – How does it work?
- Non-numeric data: If the sparkline source data contains non-numeric data, they are neglected while plotting the sparklines.
- Errors & #NA values: If data has some #NA values, they are neglected
- Blanks: sparkline show blanks as gaps
- Zeros: If data has zeros, zero value is plotted
- Data in hidden rows / columns: If data has some hidden rows / columns, the values are neglected (unless you enable “Show data in hidden cells” option)
Sparklines in Tables & Pivot Tables
You can add sparklines to tables and pivot tables too. Adding them to pivot tables is a bit tricky but adding sparklines to tables is fairly straightforward and scales nicely.
5 Tips to use Sparklines better
Here is a bunch of quick tips & tricks for those of you starting on sparklines.
- You can auto-fill sparklines. Select the first set of values and add a sparkline. Now copy and past sparklines to auto-fill them based on data in adjacent cells.
- Change their size: When you adjust row-height or column-width of the cell containing sparkline, the size of sparkline changes too.
- Juxtapose sparklines with conditional formatting icons to create stunning charts and dashboards.
- If you want to copy a sparkline over to a ppt or document, you can use “copy as picture” option.
- Enable high / low points to highlight important values
Sparklines & Compatibility
Sparklines are available since Excel 2010. They work in desktop and web versions of Excel.
What happens when someone opens a file with sparklines in Excel 2007?
Sparklines don’t show up in if you open the file in older version of Excel (say Excel 2007).
How does Sparklines compare with other alternatives?
Sparklines vs. In-cell Charts
In-cell charts are a powerful and lightweight way to create bite-sized visualizations. The main technique is to use REPT formula to repetitively show a bunch of symbols (usually | symbol) to create a small chart. The advantage of this approach is that they work in any version of Excel. But the dis-advantage is that we can make only few types of charts (bar charts, column charts by rotating cell text, dot plots). Also, incell charts require some knowledge of excel formulas and creativity.
This is where Excel Sparklines shine, as they are very easy to create and maintain.
Sparklines vs. Conditional Formatting
In Excel 2007, MS introduced a bunch of useful Conditional Formatting options like icons, heat maps that effectively create small visualizations of underlying data. These features are further improved in Excel 2010, 2013 and 2016. While conditional formatting based visualizations are easy to implement and scale very well, there are only few options (a bunch of traffic lights, data bars etc.). This could leave you high and dry if you are looking for rich visualization options. these new features require the actual data to be present in underlying cells (which is a head-ache).
Again, sparklines shine as a simpler and easier alternative.
Sparklines vs. Shrinking an actual chart
We can take an actual chart, strip it of all the clothing (remove gridlines, axis, legend, titles, labels etc.) and resize it so that it fits nicely in a cell [example]. This is the easiest and cleanest way to get sparklines in earlier versions of excel. However this approach has one problem. It doesn’t scale. (ie if you want to get 2 sparklines, you need to do twice the work). Of course, we can write some macros to take care of that, but if you are open to macros, you might as well use SfE and save a lot of trouble. But this approach of shrinking a real chart is better as it gives you full power to customize the underlying chart (add multiple series etc.) which is not available in excel sparklines.
Download Excel Sparklines Tutorial Workbook
Click here to download Excel sparklines tutorial workbook. It shows all three kinds of sparklines in a simple dashboard format. Use the data to create your own sparklines to learn more.
Conclusions on Sparklines
The sparklines in Excel is certainly a great step forward in the world of data visualization. It brings ease and consistency to most users who want better visualizations but do not know how to create them. That said, Microsoft hasn’t really introduced any new types of sparklines since 2010. This is disappointing. Ideally few more types of sparklines such as these can help with dataviz.
On a lighter note, Kudos to Office Team at MS for not adding any 3D capabilities to these sparklines. That would have unleashed a fresh dose of chart monsters.
I use sparklines in most of my dashboards and business reports.
What about you? What are your thoughts on sparklines? Have you used them? What is your experience like? Please share your ideas, impressions and tips thru comments.
Additional examples on Sparklines:
35 Responses to “Skip weekends while autofilling dates in excel”
[...] Original post by Chandoo [...]
Hi,
Is there any way that I will choose which are my "working days"?
means, I want to leave also Friday as a free day and not only Saturday.
Or, maybe someday I will pick Tuesday as a day off.
I need to also peek Wednessday, Thursday and Friday as days off. Also, for Tuesday, I would need to leave it off once every two weeks. Is there a way to easy achieve this, so that I won't actually add to my workload?
Hi Mihai... you can use pattern fill feature to do this. Simply follow steps in below demo.
Hi,
I am using MS Office 2007 and for some reason, it does not show me these options. It just shows me 3 options:
Copy Cell (Not sure about the exact text)
Copy with Formatting
Copy without Formatting
Any idea how to get those options up?
Regards,
Deep
@Deep : I am not so well versed with 2007, but here is how you can do this using menus:
enter first date of the series
select the range you want to fill
go to menu > edit > fill > series
in the dialog, select date as the series type and "weekdays only" option
press ok...
Let me know if this doesnt work...
Now that was FAST!!!
I tried it but unfortunately it didn't work..
Here is the screenshot:
http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/6573/excelsheetyr2.gif
This is what I tried..
I put the date in one row, in another row, added some calculations (as you can see in the image) and drag the content in other rows..
I could not find any Edit menu so i just clicked on the icon as you have shown in the 2nd image..
I hope I did the right thing...
Hmm...
there should be an edit menu as far as I know. Let me check that...
meanwhile... if it works you can use formulas to fill the series.
1. just enter the first date
2. in the 2nd row, enter a formula like =if(weekday(firstdatecell,2)=6,firstdatecell+2, firstdatecell+1)
3. copy the formula over the rest of the range...
@Deep:
you have to use the autofill handle, the small box at the lower right of the active cell. Right click on the autofill handle and drag down to the cells you want to autofill. A menu pops up showing the weekdays only option and others.
@Chandoo - Thanks but it did not work with my calculations. 🙁
@Robert - Yes, it worked this time but I guess, in my case it won't work as I want to add up the days from the column on the left. (As shown in the image)
Basically this is what I want:
1. I want to define project start date
2. There are no. of days assigned for each module
3. I want excel to calculate the date automatically. (By adding up the no. of days and deducting the weekends)
Any kind of help is appriciated.
Reagrds,
Deep
@Deep,
sorry, I misunderstood your question, I thought you would be searching for the autofill-function only (values).
If I got your request corrctly now, you could use the WORKDAY-function, returning the date before or after a specified number of workdays.
In Excel 2003 and earlier the Add-In Analysis Toolpak has to be installed, but since you are using 2007, it should work immediately.
@Deep.. as Robert suggested, Workday is what you should be using. It will calculate future date based number of working days you want to add to input date. Also, you can use this with your own list of holidays.
Thanks Robert, Chandoo.. I will try the things.. 🙂
I tried it and this time it worked.. Thanks to both of you.. you guys made my life much more easier 🙂
[...] You can also customize excel lists so that you can auto-fill, lets say bank holidays in your country or types of beer in your pub. One more auto fill trick. [...]
Hello,
I understand how to turn off the weekend values for a date fill in a regular auto fill. But, what if you are trying to create a custom one, that counts the amount of days in the formula bar, like 2 days, then 5 days, then 1 day etc etc etc, but they must be working days only and they must not include the weekends.
can that be done?
thanks!
hi..
i'm using excel 2007
I'm trying to insert current date automatically
then it suppose not to change after i save and open it on the next day.I need it to stay on the issued date.
i'm using Today function and it is not well work 4 me.
anybody can help to resolve my prob here?
please...
Hi guys,
How about if I just wanna fill up with weekend? The way I am doing now is using the function weekday and use filter to get weekend. Would appreciate if any one comes up with a better idea. Thank you very much.
Regards
Cheng
What happened to being able to indicate the series by adding a few cells and then using the autofill to copy? I can't get this to work - I need 4 rows with the same date skipping weekends.
2/6/2012
2/6/2012
2/6/2012
2/6/2012
2/7/2012
2/7/2012
2/7/2012
2/7/2012
2/8/2012
2/8/2012
2/8/2012
2/8/2012
2/9/2012
2/9/2012
2/9/2012
2/9/2012
Hi Kathy, sorry for a late comment. However, here's the solution.
1.) put your 1st desired date in the 1st 4 cells required (e.g. <cell A1:A4> 2/6/2012)
2.) put the following formula as is in the following four cell (i.e. A5:A8)
=IF(WEEKDAY(A1,2)=5,A1+3, A1+1)
=IF(WEEKDAY(A2,2)=5,A2+3, A1+1)
=IF(WEEKDAY(A2,2)=5,A2+3, A1+1)
=IF(WEEKDAY(A2,2)=5,A2+3, A1+1)
Note: "=5" denotes the number of working days in the week
"+3" denotes the number of days on weekends.
"+1" last denotes the number of days after the working date.
3.) Finally, select cells A4:A8 and then drag drown for furthur dates. The formula will skip Saturday & Sunday in the dates.
Let me know, if you want to tweak the formula as per other ways.
Kamlesh: Thanks for the formula. That was what I was looking for. It works the same in Google Docs Spreadsheets. At first I thought it didn't and did some unnecessary tweaking to make it work.
I was confused by the "IF(WEEKDAY(A2,2)" the modifier 2. I took it out and surpise, the formula didn't work right. I changed the 5 to 6 and then it worked. Turns out, (you probably know this) the default week starts with Sunday. Using 2 makes it start with Monday.
Any way, I didn't know about the Weekday function. Thanks for sharing this post.
Hi, Kamlesh, before i was using "workday" instead of "weekday" but it didn't work.
thanks for sharing the right formula.
At this moment I am going to do my breakfast, when having my breakfast
coming yet again to read further news.
Hi,
I'm using excel 2007
I'm trying to calculate a workday
4 nov 2014(a1) to 12 nov 2014(a2)
Normally i'm using Int formula to do this
=int(a2)-int(a1)
But, hey thats including weekend too... 😀
how do you calculate workday with this condition ?
and if there is not only those day, i mean in a month or two
Thanks before
sagari
@Sagari
=NETWORKDAYS.INTL(DATE(2014,11,4),DATE(2014,11,12),1)
=7
You can also include holidays into the formula by having a list of holidays in say A1:A10
Then use
=NETWORKDAYS.INTL(DATE(2014,11,4),DATE(2014,11,12),1,A1:A10)
Thanks for replying
Get #NAME? in return when using NETWORKDAYS.INTL
But get 7 with NETWORKDAYS
why ??
Hi
i had a query while making a template for one of my school daily task.
Most of the work in these template includes copy from webpage and paste in the template.
so the problem here is, whenevr me or my mates try to do ctrl+v
the format of the cell changes automatically.
I suggested them to use ctrl+alt+v (text) to paste
but they are not ok with it. they want me to make template in such a way that it should work with normal ctrl +v
Any ideas guys ?
Our working week is Tuesday to Saturday if I wish to make a sheet solely using those days is there a formula I can use ?
I need your support for date.
I wand to numbering actual working date based on date
below is expected result... so how can apply formula to get number automatically... please help me get resolve this problem... many thanks in advanced.
1 8/1/2018
2 8/2/2018
3 8/3/2018
8/4/2018
8/5/2018
4 8/6/2018
5 8/7/2018
6 8/8/2018
7 8/9/2018
8 8/10/2018
8/11/2018
8/12/2018
9 8/13/2018
10 8/14/2018
11 8/15/2018
12 8/16/2018
13 8/17/2018
8/18/2018
8/19/2018
14 8/20/2018
15 8/21/2018
16 8/22/2018
17 8/23/2018
18 8/24/2018
Dear Sir,
I want to make a series of December month which will show all the dates without Fridays.
Is it Possible sir??
Interesting question Salauddin... The built-in options in Excel can't generate dates like this. But you can use simple formulas to make up such a series.
In first cell (say A1) write the starting date (1-Dec-2019 for example). Makesure this date is not a Friday.
In the next cell (A2) write =WORKDAY.INTL(A1,1,16)
Now drag down the A2 cell to fill up dates. Stop when you reach the end of your range of dates.
If your Excel doesn't have WORKDAY.INTL(), then use the below alternative formula.
=A1+1+(WEEKDAY(A1)=5)
Thank you, Thank you very much sir. it worked perfectly & I was expecting something like that.
i want to make a template with date that skips fortnightly is it possible in excel
Hi Chandoo, I need to skip weekends from a specified list of dates.
from the below information I want to pick only the weekdays amount only along with lookup which has builder name separately.
Date Builder Units Amount
06-Jan-08 Doug 8 389
09-Feb-08 Dave 10 385
15-Mar-08 Dave 3 771
18-Apr-08 Brian 5 313
05-May-08 Larry 10 574
22-May-08 Rob 8 730
25-Jun-08 Morgan 4 471
15-Aug-08 Jones 1 548
12-Dec-08 Doug 3 323
10-Apr-09 Dave 5 712
14-May-09 Dave 9 432
10-Sep-09 Brian 6 460
31-Oct-09 Larry 3 741
18-Sep-08 Rob 8 580
25-Nov-08 Doug 6 685
29-Dec-08 Dave 2 401
24-Mar-09 Dave 10 342
04-Jul-09 Brian 8 475
21-Jul-09 Larry 3 535
07-Aug-09 Rob 3 663
26-Feb-08 Gill 10 762
22-Oct-08 Jones 5 425
08-Nov-08 Doug 1 639
27-Apr-09 Dave 4 409
27-Sep-09 Dave 4 612
01-Sep-08 Brian 6 688
17-Jun-09 Larry 10 663
24-Aug-09 Rob 5 608
23-Jan-08 Morgan 6 388
Thank you! I've been struggling with this for ages and today, thanks to this post, I finally figured that I had to customize my toolbar in order to utilise the "Fill" menu. This will make my monthly reports much, much neater