Microsoft Excel is one of those programs that is capable of basically anything, but it loves to hide its features from its users. One of the most advantageous tools is “Excel Charts.” The next time you are sitting at work and coloring the tabs on a spreadsheet different colors, play around a little bit to find out what you can do with the Chart function. You will be surprised to see how you can improve your next presentation or report by simply using the chart tool. Here are a few perks of using charts – to get you a little motivated.
Visualization
The most important advantage that the Microsoft Excel charts feature can present to you is the fact that it helps to visualize what you want to do. You can take a set of data that you have captured on a spreadsheet and easily convert it to a chart for better understanding/visualization. It will not only help to structure the data in a better way, but it will also help to communicate your goals with the data more effectively. Humans are visual by nature, and a colorful chart will look much better than rows and rows of numbers.
Automation
The Excel chart function is perfect for if you want to make things simpler and to display your data in a fast easy-to-read manner. It simplifies the process of displaying trends that exists in your data, but may not be identifiable in a big table that has lots of numbers.
Let’s say you have already captured data on a different spreadsheet, you can go back into that data and it will automatically be transferred to your chart without you having to make any revisions! You will be able to tweak your chart options such as axis, labels, and titles to give your chart a better “look and feel.” Generating a chart in Excel just takes a few clicks of your fingers and shazam, you’ve got a great chart that you can present to the corporate big shots. It will look like you spent hours and hours creating this unbelievable masterpiece by yourself.
Customization
No business table is ever the same, so this means that every chart won’t be the same either. Microsoft Excel is great as a customization tool because it allows you to modify almost everything to make it look personalized. Even though in creating your charts is a very simple automated procedure, Excel charts also allow the user to personally tweak every detail of the chart. You can quickly choose from a few standardized types of charts, and then you can really roll up your sleeves (if you want to) and create a whammo-zammo chart that’s entirely your own. It’s very easy to alter the data however you want like add some color to your chart or background!
Integration
Microsoft Excel makes it easy to link the charts with the table that is being analyzed (it’s actually the default). For example, if the data in your table should change for any reason, you don’t have to do anything because the chart will become automatically updated. This feature allows you to save time and have an updated chart automatically.
One More Bonus Tip to Keep in Mind
If you are working on a shared server at the office, you have the capability to create a chart in a workbook that is analyzing data from another separate workbook. In fact, many people create workbooks that contains numerous charts using this slick feature.
