Add some sparkle to your Excel tables

john lilleystone • March 1, 2020

Make your tables in Excel more interesting and informative by using Sparklines.

In the above example, the table on the left is just boring old rows and columns of numbers. The table on the right has been jazzed up a bit by using Sparklines.

Position your cursor in the cell to the right of the last value in the row and from the Insert menu on the Ribbon select the Sparkline style you want to display.

You will be prompted for two pieces of information. 1 - The data range (highlight the start and endpoint in the row) 2 - where you want to display the graphic (which should default to where you positioned your cursor).


Then just drag the square down to the other rows to copy the format.

This kind of graphic is useful for doing scorecard type analysis. As your numbers change in the data area the sparklines will adjust accordingly.
By John Lilleystone January 21, 2021
Remove whitespaces in Excel using the TRIM function.
excel iferror error alternate result
By john lilleystone April 11, 2020
Replace ugly Excel errors returned by a formula with something more appropriate and pleasing to the eye.
excel transpose
By john lilleystone March 14, 2020
Transpose and paste a vertical column of data horizontally into a row
edit hyperlink
By john lilleystone March 14, 2020
Edit a hyperlink in Outlook 2016
emoji symbol
By john lilleystone March 14, 2020
insert an emoji or symbol into your application
random numbers randbetween
By john lilleystone March 1, 2020
Use the RANDBETWEEN function in Excel to randomly generate numbers between a specified upper and lower threshold.
DATEADD MSQUERY
By john lilleystone March 1, 2020
Don't waste time manually editing queries to move the date period on one month. This blog explains how to use DATEADD to dynamically shift the dates on one month on each refresh
By john lilleystone February 29, 2020
Import text files into Excel and use the Text to Columns wizard to separate the data into columns
By john lilleystone February 26, 2020
Return the last non-zero value in a row in Excel
By john lilleystone February 4, 2020
Extract values or strings from a cell from either the left, middle or right part of the cell
Show More