Three in cell alternatives for using charts in excel

Use Sparklines to create graphic in-cell charts TIP 1 Sparklines are great to give you or your audience the big picture quickly without the fuss of a full-fledged chart.. USING SPARKLINE

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Using Charts in Excel

Use Sparklines to create

graphic in-cell charts

TIP 1

Sparklines are great to give you (or your audience) the big

picture quickly without the fuss of a full-fledged chart There

are three types of in-cell Sparkline charts you can create To

add one of these three Sparklines, go to the Insert tab and

click the button for the Sparkline you want to use

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Oregon

California

JAN

61 638 643

FEB

(654) 236 (355)

MAR

330 (345) 129

APR

646 835 154

MAY

831 278 709

JUN TREND

574 877 324

Line

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Washington

Oregon

California

JAN

61 638 643

FEB

(654) 236 (355)

MAR

330 (345) 129

APR

646 835 154

MAY

831 278 709

JUN TREND

574 877 324

Column

TIP 1

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Washington

Oregon

California

JAN

61 638 643

FEB

(654) 236 (355)

MAR

330 (345) 129

APR

646 835 154

MAY

831 278 709

JUN TREND

574 877 324

Formatting Options to Consider

1 USING SPARKLINES TO CREATE GRAPHIC IN-CELL CHARTS

Consider the following formatting options for your Sparkline Charts

Adjust the width or height of the cells containing the Sparklines to tell your story better by giving more context to the scale being displayed

Add markers to all of the data points, or just the high and low points

Use an axis to display negative numbers

Change the colors to match your document’s theme

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Washington

Oregon

California

JAN

61 638 643

FEB

(654) 236 (355)

MAR

330 (345) 129

APR

646 835 154

MAY

831 278 709

JUN TREND

574 877 324

Use Conditional

Formatting Options to

create in-cell charts

Conditional formatting is another quick in-cell alternative to creating a

separate chart in Excel Simply select your data and then choose

Conditional Formatting on the Home tab Start by going to the Home tab,

then click on Conditional Formatting > Data Bars > Solid Fill

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Conditional

Formatting

TIP 2

By default, Excel will continue to show the data values in

those cells over the top of the bars

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bars, go back to the

Conditional Formatting

menu and choose

Manage Rules Then click

Edit Rules and check the

box “Show Bar Only.”

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Use Symbols and the

REPT function for

in-cell charts

TIP 3

The third in-cell alternative is to use the REPT or Repeat

function as an alternative to charts in Excel

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REPT function

The REPT function will repeat the same text or symbol a specific number of times Let’s say you have salary information in Column D of your workbook In Column E you could type:

=REPT(“$”,D2)

For each value in Column D, this will give you a corresponding number of

dollar signs in Column E

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If the number is too large, you

can divide the value to make it

smaller.

For example, you could have

=REPT(“$”,D2/10000) which will

give you fewer dollar signs but it

will still give you a relative

number for your data set.

Quick tip #1

Instead of using text as the first argument in the REPT function, you can insert a symbol from the Symbol menu

on the Insert tab.

Quick tip #2

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Quick tip!