Beyond Boring Bar Charts: How to Fool Excel into Making (Pretty Much) Any Type of Chart You Want
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Tired of using the same old pie charts, bar charts, and line charts to tell your nonprofit’s story? Don’t have expensive data visualization software? Can’t afford to hire a graphic designer to transform your default Excel charts into polished masterpieces? In this presentation, Ann Emery showed nonprofit leaders how to transform their default Excel charts by leveraging a little Excel elbow grease. These slides are from Ann Emery's 5-minute Ignite presentation given at the Nonprofit Technology Network's (NTEN) Nonprofit Technology Conference (#13NTC) on April 11, 2013 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
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Beyond Boring Bar Charts: How to Fool Excel into Making (Pretty Much) Any Type of Chart You Want
- 1. Beyond Boring Bar Charts: How to Fool Excel into Making Any Type of Chart You Want Ann K. Emery Innovation Network aemery@innonet.org @annkemery
- 2. 0.0% 5.0% 10.0% 15.0% 20.0% 25.0% 30.0% 35.0% 40.0% 45.0% Under 5 years old 5-9 years old 10-14 years old 15-18 years old 19-24 years old 25-30 years old 31-40 years old 41-50 years old 51 and over FY07 FY08 FY09 FY10 FY11 FY07 African American African Descent Arabic Descent Asian / Pacific Islander Caucasian Latino Multiracial Native American - 200 400 600 800 1,000 1,200 1,400 1,600 1,800 2,000 FY07 FY08 FY09 FY10 FY11 English Spanish ChartsDefault & Boring @annkemery @Innonet_Eval Slide 2
- 3. Can’t afford… @annkemery @Innonet_Eval Slide 3 …expensive software? …graphic designers?
- 4. @annkemery @Innonet_Eval Slide 4 Beyond Boring Bar Charts How to fool Excel into making any chart you want Ann Emery Innovation Network www.innonet.org
- 5. @annkemery @Innonet_Eval Slide 5 Bar ChartsModern & Streamlined 1 3 2 4 Basic Bar Chart Up and Down Bar Chart Side by Side Bar Chart Back to Back Bar Chart
- 6. Bar ChartBoring @annkemery @Innonet_Eval Slide 6 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500 '07 '08 '09 '10 '11 '12 Number of Youth Served by Year Number of Youth Served 1
- 7. Bar ChartBoring @annkemery @Innonet_Eval Slide 7 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500 '07 '08 '09 '10 '11 '12 Number of Youth Served by Year Number of Youth Served 1
- 8. Bar ChartBetter @annkemery @Innonet_Eval Slide 8 202 278 410 416 450 470 '07 '08 '09 '10 '11 '12 Number of Youth Served by Year 1
- 9. Bar ChartBest @annkemery @Innonet_Eval Slide 9 202 278 410 416 450 470 '07 '08 '09 '10 '11 '12 Number of Youth Served by Year 1
- 10. comparisons?But what about 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500 '07 '08 '09 '10 '11 '12 Number of Youth Served by Year Virginia Maryland @annkemery @Innonet_Eval Slide 10
- 11. Bar ChartUp and Down @annkemery @Innonet_Eval Slide 11 Virginia Maryland 202 278 410 416 450 470 Number of Youth Served by Year 240 235 267 274 270 278 '07 '08 '09 '10 '11 '12 2
- 12. Bar ChartUp and Down @annkemery @Innonet_Eval Slide 12 2
- 13. Bar ChartSide by Side @annkemery @Innonet_Eval Slide 13 Virginia 202 278 410 416 450 470 '07 '08 '09 '10 '11 '12 240 235 267 274 270 278 Maryland Number of Youth Served by Year 3
- 14. Bar ChartSide by Side @annkemery @Innonet_Eval Slide 14 3
- 15. Bar ChartBack to Back @annkemery @Innonet_Eval Slide 15 Virginia Maryland Number of Youth Served by Year 202 278 410 416 450 470 240 235 267 274 270 278 '07 '08 '09 '10 '11 '12 4
- 16. Bar ChartBack to Back @annkemery @Innonet_Eval Slide 16 4
- 17. Bar ChartBack to Back @annkemery @Innonet_Eval Slide 17 4
- 18. @annkemery @Innonet_Eval Slide 18 ChartsModern & Streamlined 1 3 2 4 Basic Bar Chart Up and Down Bar Chart Side by Side Bar Chart Back to Back Bar Chart
- 19. @annkemery @Innonet_Eval Slide 19 in ExcelMore dataviz options
- 20. in TweetsTakeaways @annkemery @Innonet_Eval Slide 20 Dataviz is do-able in Excel! You don’t need expensive software… … just a little #ExcelElbowGrease!
- 21. annkemery aemery@innonet.org Thank You! Ann Emery Innovation Network www.innonet.org @annkemery @Innonet_Eval Slide 21
Editor's Notes
- Are you tired of using the same old pie charts, bar charts, and line charts to tell your nonprofit’s story? Do you need a better way to communicate results internally? Do you need a better way to share progress with your funders?
- Can’t afford to purchase expensive data visualization software to make better charts and graphs? Can’t afford to hire graphic designers to turn your default charts into polished masterpieces?
- Hi, I’m Ann Emery from Innovation Network. We’re going to go beyond boring bar charts. I’m going to show you how to fool Excel into making (pretty much) any type of chart you want. All you need is a little Excel elbow grease.
- I’m going to show you how to make four modern and streamlined charts in Excel – the basic bar chart, the up and down bar chart, the side by side bar chart, and the back to back bar chart.
- First, let’s start with the basic bar chart. It shows how many youth were served by a nonprofit as it’s been growing over the past 6 six years. This is the default chart in Excel.
- We need to use our Excel elbow grease. We need to get rid of the axis labels, border, grid lines. We need add data labels. We need to adjust the color scheme and increase the font size.
- Here’s a better bar chart. I removed the border, the grid lines, and the key. I added data labels, which means I could remove the axis label too.
- Here’s the best bar chart. It’s clean and streamlined. In this version, I increased the font size. I used a custom color palette, drawing attention to the last bar by using a darker color. This one’s ready to be shown off in a final report to the funders or the Board.
- But what about comparisons? Sometimes you want to compare two categories. In this example, I want to show how many people were served in the Virginia branch of the nonprofit compared to the Maryland branch of the nonprofit.
- Here’s one option. We’ve got the bar chart for Virginia on the top, and the bar chart for Maryland on the bottom.
- Behind the scenes: I just used two charts on top of each other. I made sure they have the same formatting, the same shape and size. When I paste them into Word, you can’t even tell it was two charts. It looks like one seamless chart.
- Here’s another option, the side by side bar chart. We’ve got the bar chart for Virginia on one side, and the bar chart for Maryland on the other side.