Tips and tricks: Charts in Excel

Excel is a very powerful tool that can be used for a range of business functions. This software is useful for storing data sets, deductions, and calculations by feeding formulas, and creating visualisations or data stories. Using spreadsheets is no longer a novelty, and many of you will already be using this software in your business or profession. However, making a note of some tricks and tips when working with Excel won’t hurt.

Tips and tricks

Let’s look at some tips and tricks for charts in Excel.

Tip #1: Tidying up axis scales

In one of the previous activities, we used a population chart that you might have already cleaned up. Alternatively, we even tried to clean some mess around the population numbers making them easy to read. Let’s remind ourselves what it looked like to begin with.

Click to enlarge

How do we fix this so that we can read in a scale of ‘billions’ in this chart? Follow the gif below:

Click to enlarge

Tip #2: Formatting a date axis

With time-series line graphs, there are some improvements we can make to Excel’s default date display, especially for long-term data. Observe the chart given below:

How do we fix this so that we read the date in the form of ‘years’ in this chart? Follow the gif below:

Click to enlarge

If you want to explore more such great chart tips using Excel, refer to the charts tips from Microsoft.

Download: Excel chart tips [1]

Do you have something else to share?

How can you develop your ideas to create efficient charts further?

Share some of your personal tips. These tips must help your fellow learners discover ways to get the most benefit from using the software.

References

1. Ten tips for charts. Microsoft; [date unknown]. Available from: https://templates.office.com/en-sg/ten-tips-for-charts-tm22516108