30 Chants for Better Excel Charts

I see the same innocent mistakes with Excel charts and data presentation over and over again. And a lot of them are easily avoided.

So, I'm going to share with you 30 easy to action tips on how to create better charts and dashboard reports in Excel, and the common pitfalls to avoid.

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Less is More - KISS

1. Just because Excel has loads of fancy formatting doesn’t mean you have to use it all. Leave out the ‘chart junk’.

Formatting like bevelled edges, gradient fills, 3D effects, multiple-colours and bold colour schemes merely act as a distraction to the reader.

2. If you’re trying to convey multiple messages in one chart consider more charts.

3. If you’ve got multiple charts with the same labels align the charts and label them once, once, once, once….

Alternatively a panel chart can work quite well:

4. Just because you have data on it doesn’t mean you have to put it in your report. Make sure it’s relevant to the overall objective and aids in interpretation.

Know Your Audience

5. If they don’t know a frequency polygon from a spherical polygon find a simpler alternative until you have educated them.

6. Know your message and match it to the right type of display, be it chart, table, or symbols.

Tip: a chart isn’t always the best method of communication, sometimes a table is better, especially when the information needs to be precise.

7. Know your objective for the dashboard and make sure you answer the relevant questions and lead the reader to the answers.

8. If your audience are internal employees then you can leave your company logo off. You know who you work for.

9. If the dashboard is going to be printed make sure it fits nicely onto one page, either portrait or landscape. Don’t forget to set the print settings including information in the footer about the source of the data, contact details and print date. If it’ll be viewed on screen make sure it fits without the need for scrolling.

Formatting

10. Put your most important data in the top left of your dashboard.

11. Link related data with common colours and conversely, don’t use the same colours to highlight unrelated data.

12. If you’re lacking in design genes (not designer jeans) use your company brand colours for inspiration, but if they’re bright and bold tone them down to pastel shades. Ann Emery has some great tips on the use of colour in her ‘Simple Strategies for Improving Any Chart’s Colors’ post.

13. If in doubt use shades of grey, not 50 though!

14. Consider a label for the lines on your Line chart instead of a legend.

15. If you’ve got labels on your charts you’ve made gridlines redundant. Just like gate crashers to a party, they aren’t wanted so get rid of them.

16. If you use gridlines or tick marks mute them to pale shades of grey and/or dashed/dotted lines.

17. Make sure your labels aren’t obtrusive. Consider only labelling the first and or last, or highest and lowest.

18. You don’t need black borders around your charts to separate them. Instead simply leave some white space and align your charts/tables to create frames around the content.

19. Group related charts and tables together in your dashboard. Proximity, common formatting or even a subtle grey dividing line is enough to imply they are grouped.

20. You should bequeath the darkest colours to the most important information, which is usually the numbers in your tables or lines/columns/dots etc. in your charts. Use lighter shades for chart titles, axis labels and gridlines.

21. Use colour to make one piece of information stand out from the pack. For example, in interactive charts where the reader can select the region to focus on, highlight that series in a different colour to the rest.

22. Dark backgrounds might look nice but they distract from the message. White is the new black when it comes to dashboard reports.

23. Limit the number of fonts. Two is plenty. One for headings and one for the rest. Don’t forget you can use font sizing to differentiate, but again don’t go overboard.

And by the way, Comic Sans has no place in business so you can leave that for your kids' birthday invitations not your dashboard reports.

Good fonts to use are Calibri, Tahoma, Verdana, Helvetica and good ol’ Arial.

24. Don’t make people turn their head to read the axis labels. For example abbreviate months to J, F, M, A, M etc.

Or for nominal categories like department names, regions etc. change it to a bar chart so they can be easily read.

25. Bar and column chart axis should always include zero. Starting your axis above zero is like ‘beer goggles’ for your reader. It might make your chart look more attractive and dramatic but when the reader realises your deception you’re in trouble.

Just take the chart below; East appears to be double that of West, but if you check the scale it’s only about 5% more.

26. Chart titles don’t have to be boring. Use them to make a statement about the results in the chart.

27. Pies are for eating. They have very limited place in your reports. Just take a look at my Dashboard Extreme Makeover  that clearly demonstrates their downsides.

Excel Formatting Shortcuts

28. To select all charts (and objects) select one then press CTRL+A to select all.

29. Use the Align tools to align the charts to one another. Select the chart or charts to reveal the Drawing Tools Format tab on the ribbon:

To select multiple charts click on one then hold down the SHIFT key to select more.

30. To move charts using your arrow keys simply hold down CTRL and left-click the outside of the chart. You’ll get 4 small circles that indicate the chart object is selected and you can now move it by pressing your arrow keys.

Thanks

Thanks to Jon Acampora of ExcelCampus.com for teaching me that last tip.

I’m also a big fan of data visualisation pioneers Edward Tufte and Stephen Few. For without their teachings on data visualisation and dashboard design I would most likely be making those same mistakes.

And I am grateful to Excel Chart Gurus like Jon Peltier and The Frankens Team who give me inspiration (and solutions) for what can be achieved with an Excel chart that goes way beyond what Microsoft had intended.

Want More?

Being able to present numbers visually is an incredibly valuable tool in today's market for consultants, analysts and managers.

Unfortunately Excel has a lot of visualisation traps (bad charts, unnecessary formatting etc.) and it doesn't have many plug-n-play interactive elements.

However there are some clever ways we can use drop down lists, combo boxes and more to allow the user to interact with our reports, which you often see built into dashboard reports.

I teach these cool techniques and more in my hugely popular Excel Dashboard training course.

The feedback from students is amazing. You can read some of their comments and find out pricing here.