Effective Charts and Visualizations [Excel & PowerPoint]

Choose the right chart to tell your data story across six categories—trend, comparison, flow, composition, relationship, and kpi status—using line, column, pie, scatter, and waterfall charts.

Create a clustered column chart in Excel to compare monthly outlet sales, format data series, adjust legend and themes, and note 3D charts are discouraged.

Learn to create line charts to show trends over time, compare area charts or spark lines, and add data labels while adjusting axes and formatting markers and series.

Visualize part-to-whole data and percentage contributions with a doughnut chart. Use tea exports by continent to add data labels, format systematically, and display a grand total at the center.

Create a clustered bar chart in Excel to handle many categories. Format the axis to display values in millions, add data labels, and sort data for clearer revenue analysis.

Highlight the highest and lowest sales months in a column chart by creating high and low series with max/min formulas, overlapping series, and color-coded data labels that update dynamically.

Discover how to add a target line as a benchmark in charts, create a dynamic target series, and use an if formula to highlight values that meet the target.

Create a bar in bar chart to visualize actual vs plan in Excel, using a secondary axis, adjusted gap widths, and color and transparency tweaks to reveal performance against targets.

Create a variance analysis chart from scratch to highlight positive and negative variances with conditional formatting, using invert if negative, data labels, and axis formatting for clarity.

Compute cumulative actual and plan values, then plot a dual-line chart in Excel and customize data labels at the last point to show the series names.

Create magazine-style KPI ring charts in Excel and PowerPoint using a doughnut chart, displaying a percent metric such as gross profit margin or service level, with dynamic, linked data.

Learn to build a fragmented ring chart in Excel by creating a 20-piece doughnut chart with 5% increments, display a KPI at 57%, and format colors, labels, and 43% remainder.

Create a KPI progress bar chart in Excel by using a stacked (or 100% stacked) bar to show recoveries by region with data labels and a 0–100% axis.

Learn to create a stylish pie visualization by layering a doughnut chart over a circle with gradient fills and shadows, and link a centered value label to show the percentage.

Learn a robust, version-friendly method to build waterfall charts in Excel, handling negatives and large capex by using line charts with up-down bars, or shapes when needed.

Create a waterfall chart in Excel with a stacked column approach. Learn data prep, floating bars, and formatting to show starting values, increments, and final totals.

Create a waterfall chart in Excel 2016 and higher by highlighting data, treating start and end points as totals, and formatting positives and negatives with color.

Learn to build an Excel thermometer chart that tracks paid so far toward a 100% goal for a $10,000, 12-month loan, with data prep.

Discover how index charts in Excel express context by indexing values to a base year (1998) and converting to percentages, enabling cross-country GDP growth comparisons from 1998 to 2017.

Learn to create dynamic Excel charts controlled by a dropdown stock selector, using data validation, VLOOKUP or MATCH, and HLOOKUP to update series and chart titles.

Create interactive charts with a combo box form controls, linking a dropdown selection to dynamic data via offset, vlookup, and a dynamic chart title to update visuals.

Combine option buttons from the developer menu with a linked cell to drive dynamic charts and reports, using offset or vlookup to update outlet data across months.

Master conditional formatting color scales, or heat maps, to visualize data distribution. Apply color scales in Excel to identify peak times and days for optimal posting.

Explore how to build a waffle chart in Excel with conditional formatting, using a 10 by 10 grid and a city dropdown with vlookup for its poverty-rate percentage.

Explore the logic of custom number formats in Excel, mastering positives, negatives, zeros, and text with semicolons, placeholders, and conditional styling to visually enhance data.

Learn to scale large numbers in Excel using custom number formats (CNFs), turning figures like 3,724,271 into units (thousands, millions, billions) with comma separators and K, M, B, T labels.

Apply custom number formats to chart data labels, linking to source values with icons and color rules to convey trends for clear visuals in Excel and PowerPoint.

Learn to create in-cell charts in excel using the rept function to repeat a symbol based on sales data, scale the repeats dynamically, and format for a continuous visual bar.

Use Wingdings 3 Excel to show up and down arrows with P and Q. Compare March and April values, compute change as a percent, and apply conditional formatting.

Develop a branded office theme by building a color palette and fonts, saving it as a .thmx theme, and applying it across Excel, Word, and PowerPoint.

Explore 15 PowerPoint hacks to speed up design, including perfect shapes with shift and ctrl, smart art conversion, shape merge, and using presenter view and templates.