Visualizing Data in Excel: Charts and Conditional Formatting
Published: 2023-05-22 20:29:29

These are visualizations used to visually represent data in bars and graphs. Not every stakeholder and user of data may be well-equipped with data skills.

Charts are better used to relay information, and findings and pick up trends in data.

To create visualization charts;
· Highlight the table from which the visualizations intend to come from

· Click the Insert tab

· Under the insert tab, select a chart of your choice.

There are different chart styles to choose from including but not limited to _pie charts_, _bar graphs_, and _line graphs_. There are preferred visualizations for e. g categorical data, continuous data, time and trend analysis, network data, and geographical data. A good visualization tool is one that best suits the visualization goals.

Each visualization tool has data that it is more suitable to represent:

· Numerical data — Excel provides a wide range of charts and graphs, such as line plots, scatter plots, histograms, or box plots.

· Categorical data — These can be visualized using bar charts, pie charts, stacked charts, or categorical heat maps.

· Time series data — Line graphs and charts are more suitable for trend and time analysis.

It’s important to match your data types and complexity with the capabilities and features of the visualization tool you choose.

A new worksheet can be created to host the charts for enhanced readability.

One can also choose chart styles in the chart. This is useful especially when intending to relate the visualization to the color templates of the organization the data is for and make the visualization more appealing aesthetically.

A chart elements button also can be used in Excel to add features such as a data table. These features provide convenience and efficiency for visualizing data.

## Conditional formatting in Excel
Conditional formatting is a way to see patterns and trends in data. It is essential for easily spotting trends and patterns in _data using bars_, _colors_, and _icons_ to easily highlight important values.

**Conditional formatting offers:**
· Highlighting cell rules

· Top/ Bottom rules

· Data bars

· Color scales

· Icon sets

· Creating new rules

· Deleting a rule/ clear rules

· Managing rules

Highlight cells rule is among the most commonly used conditional formatting tools. It is useful for pointing out duplicate values in columns that require unique values e. g _Customer IDs_, _Telephone numbers_, _employee IDs_, _social security numbers_ and _serial numbers for products_. These are often primary keys.

**Checking for duplicates saves the user time.**
A dialogue box pops up where a user can choose whether to highlight duplicate values or unique values. This is dependent on how the user wants to use the data. After highlighting the desired cells, simply sort the column by color using the filter function. The highlighted cells will appear at the top.

**Text that contains**
This is an option under highlighting cell rules. It is useful for finding specific keywords. E. g if you had a list of phone numbers, and want to classify them using the country code, you can check for texts that contain +254, and +234, after highlighting the telephone numbers column.