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Data Visualisation Excel Training

Create Stunning Charts in Excel and Impress Your Clients

Data can be a powerful tool for driving business decisions, but a ‘sea of totally unrelated data’, when presented, can confuse your audience. However,  you can make a huge impact by  presenting that data clearly, using captivating visuals that tell a compelling story.

This guide will equip you with the skills to leverage the data visualisation tools readily available in Excel, turning your presentations from forgettable to phenomenal. By the end, you’ll be confidently creating stunning charts that impress your clients and leave a lasting impact.

Create Stunning Charts in Excel and Impress Your Clients

From Bland to Boardroom-Ready: The Power of Storytelling with Charts

Have you ever endured a presentation where the data resembled a scrambled mess on a spreadsheet? Confusing your audience with an avalanche of numbers is a recipe for lost attention and diluted messages.

The good news is that clear and impactful communication doesn’t require complex solutions. By utilising Excel’s data visualisation tools, you can transform your presentations into engaging narratives that inform, persuade and inspire your clients.

Think of your data as the building blocks of a story, and charts as your visuals. These visuals guide your audience through a logical narrative, making complex information easier to digest.

For instance, a marketing team presenting social media engagement metrics could ditch the bullet points and pie charts. Instead, a well-designed line graph could highlight follower growth across various platforms over time. This not only presents the data but also allows the team to delve into specific strategies that drove successful campaigns – see below:

Line Chart

Create Stunning Charts in Excel and Impress Your Clients

Tailoring Charts for Maximum Impact

Understanding your audience is crucial for effective data visualisation. Consider their level of data literacy and tailor your charts accordingly.

For audiences unfamiliar with complex charts, bar graphs and pie charts offer a clear and concise way to grasp key information. For example, if you are presenting sales figures to regional managers, a bar chart comparing sales growth across different territories would be an excellent choice, allowing for easy comparison and quick identification of top performers or areas requiring improvement. See Bar and Pie charts below – Note the same data is used but each chart type presents a different perspective:

Bar Chart

Create Stunning Charts in Excel and Impress Your Clients

Pie Chart

Create Stunning Charts in Excel and Impress Your Clients

For more experienced viewers, consider using scatter plots or heat maps to reveal deeper relationships within the data. A financial analyst presenting risk assessments might utilise a scatter plot to demonstrate the correlation between stock prices and market volatility.

Scatter Chart

Create Stunning Charts in Excel and Impress Your Clients

Always prioritise clarity over complexity. An overloaded chart can be confusing and counterproductive.

Excel: Your Gateway to Charting Mastery

Excel boasts a comprehensive selection of chart types, allowing you to present your data in the most impactful way possible. Whether you need to display trends over time, highlight comparisons between categories, or reveal correlations, there’s a chart in Excel suited to your needs.

Sunburst Chart

Create Stunning Charts in Excel and Impress Your Clients

Histogram Chart

Create Stunning Charts in Excel and Impress Your Clients

Waterfall Chart

Create Stunning Charts in Excel and Impress Your Clients

Beyond choosing the right chart type, Excel empowers you to customise every aspect of your visuals. From colour palettes and fonts to data labels and gridlines, you can ensure your charts are not only informative but also visually appealing.

A strategic use of colour can significantly enhance the readability and impact of your charts. Imagine a sales manager presenting monthly revenue figures. Instead of a bland line chart, they could use a colour gradient to represent different sales targets. This would allow viewers to instantly see which sale at a particular point in time exceeded expectations and which fell short – see below:

Create Stunning Charts in Excel and Impress Your Clients

Conclusion: From Dull to Dazzling: The Final Brushstrokes

By harnessing the power of data visualisation in Excel, you can transform dry data points into a captivating story that informs, engages, and inspires your clients. Craft a clear narrative, tailor your charts to your audience, and leverage Excel’s customisation features. Remember, a well-designed chart is worth a thousand spreadsheets.

The next time you’re preparing a presentation, ditch the text-heavy slides and embrace the magic of data visualisation. Leave your clients with a clear understanding and a lasting impression.

Further Reading:

If you’ve found this useful, and you want to learn more about the topic, feel free to read on!

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Excel Training

Excel 2013: 3 New Ways To Customise Your Charts

new feature for microsoft office 2013Whether you’ve decided to use a suggested chart to represent your data or already knew which one works best from the outset, a new toolbar in Excel 2013 allow you to customise your visualisation quicker.

Selecting the chart will automatically reveal two tool ribbons: Design & Format, both specifically designed to help you manipulate your Excel 2013 charts. Although the Chart Tools Layout tab no longer exists in 2013, the buttons it contained are still available, just in different places.

Excel 2013 charts

Three (new) buttons for chart formatting now appear at the top right corner of your chart; Chart Elements, Chart Styles and Chart Filters. Instead of digging through menus you can access these buttons overlaid on the chart.

Excel 2013 charts

 

Chart Elements

Add or Remove specific elements of your chart such as Data Labels and Gridlines. This way you can have as much or as little labelling and layout features as you desire.

Excel Charts 2013

 

Chart Styles

Change the colour and style of your chart with this simple formatting option. Scroll over each option to get a preview of how your new chart will look.

Excel Charts 2013

 

Chart Filters

Want to modify what data the chart includes? Previously you had to modify the data range in a fiddly way. Now you can hide and show data with the chart filters selecting them from the tick box menu, very similar to filtering data in a table. Customising your charts has never been so easy.

Excel Charts 2013

 

For more tips and features on Excel 2013 and other versions, browse London Excel courses from STL, available London and UK wide. With training levels ranging from beginner up to advanced and Excel VBA, there’s sure to be a course to suit your needs.