Conditional formatting is a very popular feature of Excel and is usually used to shade cells with different colors based on criteria that the user defines. We can apply the idea of conditional formatting to column charts by using multiple data series because the Excel feature applies only to cells, not charts. Define boundary values…
Author: Dave Paradi
Dave Paradi has over twenty-two years of experience delivering customized training workshops to help business professionals improve their presentations. He has written ten books and over 600 articles on the topic of effective presentations and his ideas have appeared in publications around the world. His focus is on helping corporate professionals visually communicate the messages in their data so they don't overwhelm and confuse executives. Dave is one of fewer than ten people in North America recognized by Microsoft with the Most Valuable Professional Award for his contributions to the Excel, PowerPoint, and Teams communities. His articles and videos on virtual presenting have been viewed over 4.8 million times and liked over 17,000 times on YouTube.
Virtual sessions for pharma company (September 22 – October 6, 2020)
Delivering six 90-minute sessions (equivalent to a 1.5-day workshop) covering how to structure content, reduce information overload, select the right visuals, present in a virtual setting, and the Excel and PowerPoint techniques to create effective visuals. Delivered over Zoom.
Stagger long axis labels and make one label stand out in an Excel column chart
The problem with long axis labels and the common solution If you have long axis labels in a column chart, Excel will rotate them to fit the full labels in if the chart is not wide enough. This is hard for the viewer to read. The common approach to solving this issue is to add…
8 steps to make a professional looking bar chart in Excel or PowerPoint
A bar chart is used to rank values from largest to smallest, usually in a single series of data. Creating a bar chart in Excel or PowerPoint is simple, but making it look professional requires you to change some of the defaults in the chart. Here are 8 steps to turn a default bar chart…
7 steps to make a professional looking line graph in Excel or PowerPoint
A line graph is used to show a trend, usually over time. There can be a single data series to show one trend or multiple data series to show trends that can be compared to each other. It is simple to create a line graph in Excel or PowerPoint but to make it look professional…
7 Steps to make a professional looking column graph in Excel or PowerPoint
A column graph or chart is used to compare values to each other. It typically compares values in only a single data series. It is simple to create in Excel or PowerPoint, but making it look professional takes attention to the details of the graph. Here are 7 steps to turn the default column graph…
5 Good reasons to use your corporate PowerPoint template; Issue #448 September 17 2019
How do most business professionals start creating their PowerPoint slides? They open a previous presentation and copy a few slides into a new file, making sure to click the Keep Source Formatting option so the template from the previous file gets applied. This is a big mistake. You may get an old version of the…
Overlapping bar progress graph
One of the common messages reported in financial or operational reports is progress towards a goal. It could be a spending goal, production goal, or any other important metric that is tracked. The decision makers want to see the goal, where we expected to be at this time, and actual progress. Instead of the typical…
Using the CONCAT function to create custom data labels for an Excel chart
You are familiar with data labels for Excel graphs, typically they are used for adding the values to columns or bars (part of my suggestions for making professional column or bar charts). Next level usage is to replace the legend in a line graph with series name labels on the end of each line (part…
Marking the current date on a line chart in Excel
In this video I show how to add a current date line that will always show the current date on a line graph.