Add Some Style to Your Tables in Excel Reports
Excel tables in reports have always been difficult for me to format professionally. So every once in a while, I experiment with them.
The two...
Professional Quality Excel Chart Labels, Legends, and Colors
The following Excel chart shows that Excel really CAN generate professional-quality chart figures.
Here are some general strategies to consider…
1. Set up your data-plumbing correctly....
Simple Transformations Can Reveal Hidden Patterns in Your Data
Excel users have at least two significant advantages over business professionals who rely on other analytical and reporting tools.
First advantage: We Excel users can...
Three Simple Tricks to Improve Analytical Charting in Excel
For years, my Excel charts of trends used a simple idea: To gain insights about periodic data, just chart it.
What else was there to...
Introducing the Power of Year-Over-Year Performance Charts in Excel
The purpose of management reports should be to help readers find and track patterns of performance…quickly and easily.
That’s the attraction of charts, of course....
Dashboard-Like Excel Charts of International Consumer Confidence
The following Excel figure displays its charts in a dashboard-like format. At least, it's in a format that dashboards should use!
When you use simple...
Chart Your Rate of Change to Reveal Hidden Business Performance
What insights can you gain from the following Excel chart of Apple's quarterly revenues over the past 18 years?
I see three things. First, their...
Add Low-Overwhelm Context to Your Line Charts
The data you display in charts often takes on new meaning when you display it in the context of other data.
One way to add...
Excel Bar Charts with Economic Indicators
The Excel figure below shows three indicators of the US economy. Two show economic improvements and one doesn't.
The Excel Perspective
Using column charts rather than...
How to Remove a Speed Bump From Your Excel Charts
Because managers need QUICK insight, we should remove as many speed bumps as possible from our reports and analyses.
The following figure with two Excel...
Latest Articles
Getting Radical with Excel
It's time to think about Excel in a radical new way—when we use it to work with business or economic data.
It's time, in fact,...
How Fast Is Too Fast?
(Originally published in Inc Magazine.)
What typically tops the list of worries of the chief executive officers of fast growing companies? Financing that growth, according...
How to Smooth Data by Using the TREND Function
Years ago, I read that Prof. William S. Cleveland had suggested that data could be smoothed by calculating a centered trendline through adjacent data—a...
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