5 Tips for Making Your Excel Dashboard Pop

Introduction

Excel dashboards provide an efficient way to manage data, making it easy to spot patterns and trends through graphical representations. Whether you're tracking project progress, managing finances, or analyzing customer information, an Excel dashboard can provide the insights you need to stay ahead. A successful Excel dashboard is visually appealing, easy to customize, and provides valuable information in an easy-to-use format.

Here are 5 useful tips for creating an Excel dashboard that stands out:

Tip One: Find the Right Template

When creating an Excel Dashboard, it’s important to invest adequate time in finding the right template. There are a variety of robust features within Excel that can be used to help craft an impressive dashboard, yet finding the right template is a key step to achieving success.

Explore Specific Excel Features That Suit Your Need

Before opting to use a pre-made template, consider exploring specific Excel features that may fit your needs. Excel is rich with powerful features, from using charts and graphs to data tables and even macros and visual basic. By utilizing Excel's powerful built-in features, you’ll be able to create a customized dashboard tailored to your specific goals.

Use Pre-Made Excel Templates Tailored to Your Project

Rather than starting from scratch, consider utilizing the abundance of pre-made Excel templates that are tailored to a variety of different projects. For example, Microsoft Excel offers many templates for businesses, personal projects, budgeting, and more. Utilizing a pre-made template can help you save yourself some time and energy when preparing your dashboard.

Utilize Pre-Made Templates to Save Time While Creating Your Dashboard

Pre-made Excel templates provide a great edge when it comes to saving time while creating a dashboard. You don’t need to be a pro at creating a dashboard to create an effective one. Pre-made Excel templates present a solution that may help you save time and energy when crafting your project.

Tip Two: Utilize Conditional Formatting

Conditional formatting provides a powerful way to visually highlight data in your Excel dashboard by changing the cell's fill color, text color, and or style depending on the cell's value or another variable. It can be used to visually separate important data from the rest of the dashboard, call out outliers or anomalies, and make your results easier to read.

How-To Use Conditional Formatting

Using conditional formatting is simple, simply select the cells you wish to apply the formatting to, then press the 'conditional formatting' button in the styles section of the Home tab. You can then select from a list of preset rules, or create your own rule.

Examples of How to Use Conditional Formatting

The most common use for conditional formatting is to highlight cells with certain values. For example, applying conditional formatting to a cell with a value greater than 100 might make it red, or applying conditional formatting to a cell when the value is greater than the cell to the left might make it green. One of the more advanced uses for conditional formatting is to apply to cells based on a logical formula, providing even more powerful expressions.

Benefits of Using Conditional Formatting in Excel Dashboards

Applying conditional formatting to your dashboard not only provides more visual distinction between data, but also allows viewers of the dashboard to quickly identify important insights. Conditional formatting also simplifies data, letting viewers focus on the important trends without getting overwhelmed by the multitude of data points.

Tip Three: Create Visually Pleasing Graphs

Creating visually pleasing graphs is a great way to draw attention to your Excel dashboard and help readers understand information quickly. Here are a few tips to help you do just that:

Leverage color palette for visual interest

Colors can help readers draw meaningful relationships between columns, rows, and data points. Choose colors that fit your brand, but also keep in mind the meaning associated with certain colors. For example, blue is often associated with trust and reliability, while orange can bring feelings of optimism and cheerfulness.

Organize your data into digestible graphs

Think about how you can best organize your data into graphs that can be easily understood and interpreted. Make sure that each graph clearly communicates its message and that they’re well-spaced on the dashboard. Doing this will help readers quickly understand your dashboard.

Utilize data hats to show connections between data points

Data hats are small graphics next to data points that allow you to quickly see the relationships between values. Doing this will help you identify outliers or relationships between data points. For example, if two data points are closely related, you can use a “connection hat” between them to indicate the relationship. This ensures that readers can quickly draw relationships between points.

Tip Four: Utilize the Power of Pivot Tables

Pivot tables are a great way to summarize, analyze, and explore data. By grouping and totaling data, you can quickly uncover trends, outliers, and other important insights. With the right formula or filter, a pivot table can be a valuable tool for your dashboard.

Understand What Pivot Tables are and Why They're Useful

A pivot table can quickly provide you with an overview of your data in an easy-to-read format. It also allows you to sort, filter, and cross-reference data, so you can quickly uncover insights that would otherwise require an in-depth statistical analysis. By using data from multiple spreadsheets, you can also compare different datasets to gain more meaning from your data.

Create an Easy to Read Report of Your Data

Since a pivot table is a summary of your data, you can easily customize the layout to create an appealing, visual report that you can use in your dashboard. You can easily add or remove fields, apply filters, and customize charts and graphs to improve the readability of your report. Additionally, you can add data labels and conditional formatting to draw attention to key areas of your report.

Efficiently Filter, Summarize, and Analyze Data

Pivot tables allow you to quickly filter, summarize, and analyze data. For example, you can quickly create a report that shows sales by region or product. You can also use aggregating functions such as AVERAGE, COUNT, and SUM to quickly calculate key metrics such as average sale price, total number of sales, and total sales amount. Additionally, by connecting data points, you can quickly analyze correlations between different datasets.

Tip Five: Leverage Keyboard Shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts provide a way to accomplish tasks in a fraction of the time it takes to use a mouse or trackpad. Becoming a pro at executing your tasks and troubleshooting via keyboard shortcuts can empower you to quickly implement solutions while creating a stunning Excel dashboard.

Find and Learn Shortcuts to Quickly Execute Tasks

One of the best ways to learn and practice new shortcuts is by exploring the options available. Downloading an overview of options can be useful when you're just starting out and aren’t sure which ones you might need.Knowing the shortcut list allows you to experiment and quickly look up potential solutions when you forget.

Choose the Most Important Shortcuts and Commit to Memory

Once you've identified the shortcuts that are most relevant for your Excel dashboard tasks, the next step is to commit them to memory. Learning the shortcuts for less frequent tasks may not be as beneficial as mastering the ones you need for primary processes. Writing down each shortcut you want to remember and using them repeatedly until they become second nature is one of the best ways to commit them to your long-term memory.

Make Practice a Habit to Become an Excel Pro

Using shortcuts regularly will help you become a pro at creating Excel dashboards in no time. Set aside time each day to practice by running through the set of shortcuts you have chosen and making sure you can use them quickly and accurately. Additionally, you can explore the options available to you in Excel and find new shortcuts that may be useful to you.

Conclusion

Creating an impressive Excel dashboard isn't an easy task. But, it's necessary to successfully organize and present data. All following five tips can help you make your Excel dashboard really pop:

• Prioritize what's important
• Get creative with filters
• Choose the right charts
• Benefit from certain functions
• Include vital data

Efficiently utilizing these tips can help you create an Excel dashboard that is easy to read and visually appealing. If created correctly it can become a go-to source of information for all of your colleagues, no matter how much data it needs to convey.