[Weekend Poll] How do you Sex up your Charts?
This weekend, let us talk … umm… charts. I want to know if you absolutely make sure your charts look good every time you sent them out to someone. I do this most of the time.
How do you sex up your charts?
Colors in Chart Labels [Quick Tip]
A simple label formatting hack can improve the effectiveness of YoY change charts by adding color to differentiate positive vs. negative growth (or mediocre vs. sky rocketing growth rates). See this example:
Use Alt+Enter to get multiple lines in a cell [spreadcheats]
A very quick spreadcheat for Friday. If you need to type content in a cell and you want to see it multiple lines then use alt + enter to break the content in several lines. See to the right for an example.
Bonus tip: If you are using formulas to create content in a cell by combining various text values and you want to introduce line breaks at certain points … For eg. you are creating an address field by combining house number, street name, city and zip code and you want to introduce line breaks after house number and street name then you can use CHAR(10).
Creating Excel Art from Images [spreadsheet fun]
Amit at Digital Inspiration features a lengthy way of creating beautiful excel cell art from an image. I guess we all can use a method that is little simpler and smarter.
Custom Views in Excel – Save filter and header settings for quick reference
PHD reader and commenter Vishy contributed this post through e-mail. Thank you so much Vishy for this very useful tip. The Problem: You have created a specific view of your data in Excel (say by filtering, zooming out, changing column width, hiding specific rows, customizing window settings, print settings etc.). This is your reference point […]
Brick Charts in Excel – an Alternative to Gridlines
Grid lines provide great help in understanding values in a chart. Here is a handy trick you can use in the next bar chart to spice it up. Here is how you can get this type of chart (we will call it a brick chart) First we will make a regular bar chart Now, let […]
Is your (chart’s) underwear showing?
When I read Is your website’s underwear showing?, I couldn’t control the urge to write this one. So the big screaming friday question everyone… Is your chart’s underwear showing? What is my chart’s underwear? you may ask. My dear reader, it is the background color (that grayish shade excel adds by default). Also commonly known […]