Excel Dashboards and Reports (Mr. Spreadsheet's Bookshelf)

Conditional formatting allows you to look at your Excel reports and make split-second determinations on which values are “good” and which are “bad,” all based on formatting.

When you create a chart, Excel attempts to determine whether your category axis contains date or time values. If so, it creates a time-series chart.

A histogram is essentially a graph that plots frequency distribution. A frequency distribution shows how often an event or category of data occurs. With a histogram, you can visually see the general distribution of a certain attribute.

Single Accounting underlines are different from the standard underlines you typically apply by pressing Ctrl+U on the keyboard. Standard underlining draws a line only as far as the text goes. That is to say, if you underline the word YES, you get a line under the three letters. Single Accounting, on the other hand, draws a line across the entire co

there may not always be enough space available to add a chart that shows trending. In these cases, icon sets are an ideal replacement, enabling you to visually represent the overall trending without taking up a lot of space.

A dashboard should provide an at-a-glance view into key measures relevant to a particular objective or business process. This implies that all the data is immediately viewable at one time. Although this isn’t always the easiest thing to do, it’s best to see all the data on one page or screen.

Studies show that users pay particular attention to the upper left and middle left of a document.

Ideal colors for labels are soft grays, light browns, soft blues, and greens.

Place the key components of your dashboard in the upper-left or middle-left of the page.