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…
Category: Intermediate Excel Chart Skills
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.
Marking the breakeven date on a line chart in Excel
In this video I show how to add a breakeven line to a line graph to show when the values change from negative to positive. You can adapt the technique in this video to other situations of values passing a criteria over time.
Add/Insert an Excel chart/graph on a PowerPoint slide
If you are using an Excel chart in a presentation, you will want to insert or add the chart to one of your PowerPoint slides. There are a number of ways you can do this. I recommend four methods, two where the graph in PowerPoint is not linked to the Excel worksheet and two where…
Conditional formatting for donut chart
Jon Acampora of Excel Campus has created two videos on creating a donut chart that has conditional formatting so that the segment that represents progress changes color based on the percentage value. The first video goes over the basic steps to create a donut chart. The second video extends this to add conditional formatting to…
“Torn paper” look for non-zero axis; Issue #436 April 2 2019
In my Twitter feed I saw a number of well respected data visualization experts liking a recent article by RJ Andrews for the Data Visualization Society. In it he talks about the issue of starting the axis of a graph at a value other than zero. This is a common topic in the dataviz world…
Comparing only one value to a standard; Issue #432 February 5 2019
When you want to compare values to a standard, such as comparing output in various production plants to the goal, a dashed line on a column graph is a good visual to use. The dashed line runs across the graph and it is easy to see if each column is above or below the goal.…