How to Create Funnel Charts in Excel
Although “funnels” are a common term in selling, the concept also can apply to other business activities.
The general idea is that an organization begins...
How to Create Excel Traffic Lights with Charts and Text
"Traffic lights" are a common feature offered by software designed for management reporting and analysis.
Traffic lights provide at least two benefits. First, they alert...
How to Create Dynamic Chart Legends in Excel
When I saw a chart designed like the ones below in the Wall Street Journal, I knew I had to create one just like...
How to Create Cycle Plots in Excel to Chart Seasonal Sales Data
If your company's sales are seasonable, you've probably seen a chart that looks something like the first one below.
This Excel chart shows the continuous...
How to Create Bullet Graphs to Replace Gauges in Excel
Business presentations desperately need a replacement for dashboard gauges. Gauges consume too much space in a report. They use excessive "chart junk." They're not...
How to Create a Rolling Forecast of Seasonal Sales in Excel
The Excel chart below shows the typical saw-tooth pattern of seasonal sales.
Seasonal sales have about the same pattern every year, every week, or both. In...
Highlight Normal Results in Line Charts to Make Exceptional Results Stand Out
Line charts that show trends in performance are the most useful type of chart that management reports can contain.
All managers want good performance to...
Good Examples of Bad Charts: Chart Junk from a Surprising Source
For years, I’ve written that we Excel users should create “magazine-quality” charts for our reports and analyses.
However, we must be very careful of the...
Five Ways to Calculate Frequency Distributions in Excel
Walt captures blood-pressure readings and wants to find how often the readings fall into various ranges of values.
This is a common need for a...
First Excel Dashboard Report Showing Financial Data for a Public Company
The figure below shows the first Excel dashboard to display data about a public company. Although this report looks quite similar to today's reports,...
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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