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:
15 Responses to “A Gantt Chart Alternative – Gantt Box Chart”
That's a great idea.
Maybe the planned End Date should be highlight more.
I don't know how it would look like (nor how to do it yet), but what if instead of finishing the bold line to the best case End Date, it finishes to the realistic End Date?
The idea is ok, I think other project management tools have this, already? Maybe not.
Gantt charts in my view are about the signal most unless thing in the world, theres no way you can look at one thats more that a little complex and understand what it's telling you. I'm going to write a diatribe on project management at some point, its one of my pet areas I think!! 😉
The issue I have with this chart Chandoo, is that Tasks need to be linked to each other, so they should inherit the uncertainty, which would mean the as you moved down chart the lines would be miles apart for later tasks, and you might have to add lots of lines for subsequent tasks to cover the various outcome of it's parents.
Having said that, for the high level board summary, it's a nice way to go, it it appeals to the management 😉
thanks Chandoo, great post.
Ross
Whoooa !!! That's a very clever idea Chandoo. I really love it.
I think i'll update my gantt project sheet with that idea soon (remember my template ?)
@ross : you can link start date to the end date of the previous task in your data. The only problem I still se is to which end date (real ? planned ? best ?) in order to have average amount of information.
If best end date, you'll tend to increase uncertainty at the end of chain, although if you link to real end date, uncertainty will be decreased too much, leading in both cases to wrong management direction.
Maybe planned till the task is finished then real will do the job ?
Hey chandoo, this looks good and this would definite add value in production planning / scheduling. Uncertainity in finishing a task is very high in production scheduling and this could give an insight or a bird eye view of possible shipments we can have....
I've always been frustrated by the limitations of gantt charts. Will definitely use this, I've always struggled with how to succinctly communicate the uncertainty of certain tasks without confusing stakeholders.
I like this, I think it's a very effective way of showing how a timeline can change and which parts of a project need close attention.
@Cyril / @Ross: I would intially link the the start date to the planned end date of the previous task, with the chart updating when a task has been completed to reflect the true end date.
Or what about giving a drop-down selection box to allow the user to see the chart based on planned/best-case/worst-case end dates?
Like the idea. Have found that Excel is more flexible than MS Project for graphical solutions. The "Best Case"\"Worst Case" metrics are theoretically appealing but once the project and\or phase commences their reliability diminishes. A chart like the above that showed Planned Start, Planned End, Replan End Start, Replan End Date, Number of Replans the Start and End Dates, and Actual would provide an active, actionable view of each task\phase. It would also highlight the areas which are riskiest.
It is always amazing how flexible excel can be.
My question is how would the chart show a scenario where the date moved up? If a task is dropped or the duration of the task is significantly reduced by applying more people or machinery to the task, the dates will move up.
The gantt chart has been around for a long time, but it is still quite useful to show progress.
Cheers,
B
I like the idea but seems bit complicated in case of long projects involving numerous activity.
Also, reading and explaining is required hence not feasible where plans are just send to audience for approval.
Cheers
SY
Great idea Chandoo,
When I was reading this idea regarding delivery dates, another thought popped into my mind, how can you show the uncertainty with MONEY!!
In this case, applies to cost management or even a normal budget, you think?
Would Box Chart and Gannt Chart help to understand the best case, middle case and worst case when money is spend or planned with these three risks are involved?
I imagine that this chart could help people who write their budgets get a better understanding of risks affecting their spending.
Peter
Chandoo,
I like it. How would you display an entry once it has been completed (actual)?
Thank you,
Matt
From what you have shown so far I think that this box Gantt chart is awesome! I think that this could be an extremely useful tool.
I can't wait to learn how to make my own charts in Excel.
Will the methods that you are going to teach us work in 2003 as well?
[...] Firday, we proposed a new chart for showing project plans. I chose an ugly name for it and called it Gantt Box [...]
You need to read Eli Goldratt's Critical Chain. The uncertainty you are looking for should be accounted for in a project buffer. Not at each task level.
Further you should spend time understanding Agile Development. This would have you plan only in 1-3week iterations. This allows you to embrace changes to work not yet started, and for your customer to re-direct your course at regular intervals (after each iteration) throughout your project. keyword search: Agile Scrum
These items will show you that you are solving a tracking problem for something that you can entirely avoid!
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