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How to Create Powerful Presentations Using Excel

TL;DR Transform raw Excel data into compelling presentations with our 15-step guide. Learn to set objectives, clean data, select appropriate charts, and incorporate interactive elements for engaging and effective presentations. Enhance your storytelling and data visualization skills to create powerful, dynamic presentations.

Introduction

Sometimes, we receive data in Excel and are tasked with transforming this raw data into powerful presentations. Excel is not just for spreadsheets; its powerful data manipulation capabilities make it an excellent tool for creating presentations, especially when dealing with large datasets or when you need to display data-driven insights dynamically. This guide provides 15 detailed steps to help you turn Excel data into compelling presentations effectively.

Detailed Steps to Create Engaging Presentations Using Excel

• Set Your Objectives
• Clearly define the purpose of your presentation.
• Identify the core message you want to convey.
• Understand your audience's needs and expectations.
• Set actionable goals for what your presentation should achieve.
• Align your presentation structure to these objectives for maximum impact.
• Organize Your Data
• Separate raw data and analysis into different sheets for clarity.
• Group similar data together to facilitate easier analysis.
• Use named ranges to make data references clearer.
• Organize data chronologically or categorically based on the presentation flow.
• Maintain a clean and organized data setup to avoid confusion during visualization.
• Clean Your Data
• Remove any irrelevant or redundant data.
• Correct all errors and inconsistencies in the data set.
• Use Excel functions like TRIM to clean text data.
• Standardize data formats (dates, numbers, etc.) across your dataset.
• Check for and resolve any missing data issues.
• Select Appropriate Charts
• Choose charts that best represent the nature of your data.
• Consider the impact of different chart types on data interpretation.
• Use bar or column charts for comparisons among categories.
• Opt for line charts to display trends over time.
• Employ pie charts to show proportions within a whole.
• Utilize Advanced Chart Options
• Explore Excel’s specialized charts like radar or waterfall for complex data.
• Customize chart colors, labels, and legends for better readability.
• Use trend lines or data labels to add meaningful insights to charts.
• Employ dual-axis charts for comparing different datasets on the same chart.
• Utilize 3D charts to enhance visual appeal, but use sparingly to avoid distortion of data.
• Link Data Dynamically
• Connect charts to live data sources to ensure real-time data updates.
• Use Excel’s Data Model to integrate data from multiple sources.
• Apply dynamic formulas like INDEX and MATCH to make charts responsive.
• Employ data validation techniques to ensure data integrity.
• Set up dynamic ranges to auto-adjust as data grows.
• Incorporate Interactive Elements
• Use slicers and timelines for interactive data segmentation.
• Implement PivotTables to summarize large datasets dynamically.
• Add form controls like buttons and sliders to make the presentation interactive.
• Design your slides to respond to user inputs or selections.
• Ensure interactive elements are intuitive and clearly contribute to the narrative.
• Design a Dashboard
• Combine multiple data visualizations on a single screen for a unified view.
• Ensure each component of the dashboard provides unique but complementary information.
• Use consistent design elements across all visuals for a cohesive look.
• Make sure the dashboard is easy to read and navigate.
• Include interactive elements in the dashboard to engage the audience.
• Automate with Macros
• Use macros to streamline repetitive tasks, enhancing presentation efficiency.
• Automate data updates and visual adjustments with VBA scripts.
• Write macros that help navigate through the presentation smoothly.
• Ensure macros are tested and error-free to avoid glitches during the presentation.
• Provide button triggers for macros on the Excel interface for easy access.
• Narrative Flow
• Structure your presentation to tell a coherent story.
• Begin with an introduction that outlines key points.
• Build the body of your presentation with data-driven analysis.
• Conclude with a strong, data-supported conclusion.
• Transition smoothly between sections to keep your audience engaged.
• Maintain Design Consistency
• Use a uniform color scheme, font style, and layout across all slides.
• Apply consistent formatting rules for all data visuals.
• Design templates that can be reused for future presentations.
• Ensure that the visual design supports the data narrative.
• Avoid overdesigning that may distract from the data itself.
• Test and Iterate
• Conduct dry runs to test the flow and functionality of your presentation.
• Invite feedback from peers to refine content and design.
• Make iterative adjustments based on practical trials and feedback.
• Test on different devices to ensure compatibility.
• Finalize the presentation after thorough testing and refinement.
• Prepare Backups
• Save copies of your presentation in multiple formats.
• Ensure you have both digital and physical backups available.
• Regularly update your backups to reflect the latest changes.
• Store backups in different locations to mitigate risk.
• Consider cloud storage options for easy access and additional security.
• Have a contingency plan in place in case of technical issues.
• Add Supporting Notes
• Embed comments within your Excel cells to provide additional context.
• Use the notes section for personal reminders during the presentation.
• Prepare detailed explanations that can be referred to if questions arise.
• Keep notes concise and relevant to the data being presented.
• Ensure all notes are hidden from the audience view but accessible to you.
• Peer Review
• Share your presentation with colleagues or experts for feedback.
• Encourage constructive criticism to refine your presentation.
• Consider diverse perspectives to enhance the presentation’s appeal.
• Implement suggested changes that align with your objectives.
• Conduct a final review session to ensure all feedback has been addressed.

Mastering Excel for presentations transcends basic data visualization—it transforms how we communicate and persuade with data. This expertise not only empowers you to deliver insights in a compelling manner but also enhances your strategic influence within your organization or client base. Through the careful integration of data, design, and narrative, your presentations become not just informative but transformative, inspiring action and facilitating decision-making. The steps outlined in this guide equip you with the tools to turn complex data into captivating stories that resonate deeply with your audience. Embrace these practices to elevate your presentations from mundane to memorable, ensuring that every data point not only informs but also inspires and engages.

Are you ready to leverage your Excel data into powerful narratives that not only inform but also inspire and persuade? Visit INK PPT today and discover how our expert design services can amplify your presentation impact. At INK PPT, we don't just design slides; we craft stories that engage, inform, and motivate your audience to action. Elevate your presentations with us—where data meets design and storytelling.

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• May 13, 2024
• Comments Off on How to create PowerPoint from Excel
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• How to create PowerPoint from Excel

Creating PowerPoint presentations is essential for sharing ideas and results in business. Creating these presentations can be challenging and time-consuming (especially if integrating Excel data is needed). It involves researching, organizing information, and deciding how to present key points clearly. Designing presentation slides that are visually appealing and adding graphs, charts and tables can further complicate the process. Wouldn’t it be nice to create PowerPoints from Excel with just a few clicks? 👀

It’s very common for consultants, marketing managers or other people to create PowerPoints from Excel data. This can include data like statistics, research findings, or forecasts in your presentations, which might be stored in Excel files. Manually transferring this XLS data to create graphs and charts is a lot of work. Thankfully, Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help simplify this task. AI tools can automatically turn Excel (XLS) data into PowerPoint slides. This is especially useful for consultants and professionals in various fields who need to present complex data efficiently.

There are two types of tools that allow you to create PowerPoint presentations from Excel automatically:

• Tools that directly generate completed PowerPoint presentations.
• Tools that create presentation content that you then need to copy manually.

In this blog post, we’ll cover how to create PowerPoint from Excel using both types of tools (both powered by AI). As a test example, we will use an Excel file containing data on changes in the US population by state from 1910 to 2020.

Note: The file was downloaded from the US Department of Commerce: https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial/2020/data/apportionment/population-change-data-table.xlsx

We’ll explore tools like SlideSpeak, Microsoft Copilot, Beautiful.ai, and ChatGPT and provide a comprehensive guide on leveraging their functionalities to create impactful presentations. Additionally, we’ll list the pros and cons of each tool so that you can make informed decisions based on your specific needs and preferences.

Method 1: Generating PPT from XLSX using SlideSpeak

Website: https://slidespeak.co

SlideSpeak is a powerful AI tool that allows you to automatically convert PDF, Word, and XLSX files into ready-made beautiful presentations in minutes.

To generate a presentation from an Excel (XLS) file using SlideSpeak, you need to perform the following steps:

• Select the Excel file: select the file based on which you want to create a presentation.
• Upload the file: upload the file to SlideSpeak.
• Preview data: preview the uploaded data in SlideSpeak. You can also ask it questions about the uploaded data.
• Create a presentation: select the necessary parameters and start the process of creating the presentation.
• Review the table of contents: review the presentation’s table of contents that SlideSpeak suggests.
• Select a template: choose a presentation template.
• Review the presentation: review and download the finished presentation. 

Step 1: Select the Excel file 

Open SlideSpeak . Drag the Excel file from which you want to create a presentation into the box in the center of the screen, or upload this file using the Click to upload button.

Step 2: Upload a file

To upload a file, click the Upload button under the file name and wait a little.

Step 3: Preview data

After loading the data, it will be displayed on the screen. You can now also ask SlideSpeak questions about the uploaded data.

To start the process of creating a presentation, click the Create Presentation button in the upper right corner.

Step 4: Create a presentation 

After starting the presentation generation process for your Excel file, SlideSpeak asks you to configure some presentation parameters. You can choose the desired number of slides, presentation language, and tone. In addition, you can add stock images to the presentation.

If you use the premium version of SlideSpeak, you can also use the brand logo, color, and fonts.

After setting all the presentation’s parameters, click the Next button at the bottom of the page and wait a few minutes for the presentation to be generated.

Step 5: Review the table of contents

Based on the data from the Excel file, SlideSpeak creates content for the presentation. Review it, and if you are satisfied with it, click the Next button to proceed to the next step of generating the presentation.

Step 6: Select a template

At this step, you will be prompted to choose a presentation template. Select one of the default templates or upload your own and click the Generate button. The presentation will be ready in a few minutes.

Step 7: Review the presentation

You can now review the finished presentation. Users with a paid subscription can also regenerate the presentation and download it as a PDF or PowerPoint file.

Pros and cons

• The ability to upload an Excel file to SlideSpeak without the need for manual copying and pasting;
• User-friendly interface;
• Automated and quick presentation generation process;
• Ability to customize the presentation according to the user’s needs and preferences;
• Ability to choose the presentation language;
• Additional features are available for users with a paid subscription.
• Limited customization options;
• There is no possibility to edit the finished presentation;
• Unlimited use requires a paid subscription.

SlideSpeak is a convenient and fast tool that allows you to automatically create PowerPoint from Excel. However, if you prefer to set up the presentation manually, you may miss some functionality. Therefore, before choosing a tool for creating presentations, it is important to define your needs and analyze the tool’s capabilities.

Method 2: Create PowerPoint from Excel using MS Copilot

Website: https://copilot.microsoft.com/

Microsoft Copilot is an AI-powered tool that integrates with Microsoft PowerPoint. Using advanced natural language processing techniques, it can summarize documents, generate content, and answer questions about content.

Copilot uses advanced AI to let you quickly create presentations based on the provided Excel data. Given that AI is not 100% accurate, you may need to manually edit the presentation after it is automatically generated. However, Copilot can do most of the hard work and significantly speed up the process to create a presentation. It is important to note that you need a paid subscription to use Copilot in PowerPoint.

Here is a brief overview of how to create PowerPoint from Excel using MS Copilot.

• Open Microsoft Copilot in PowerPoint: create a presentation and open the Copilot toolbar.
• Insert data into Copilot in PowerPoint: copy the data from your Excel file and insert it into Copilot.
• Review the presentation: generate and, if necessary, edit the presentation.

Step 1: Open Microsoft Copilot in PowerPoint

Create a new presentation in PowerPoint and click the Copilot button on the right side of the toolbar. A Copilot panel will then appear on the right. The Copilot button is only available to users with a paid Copilot subscription.

Step 2: Insert data into Copilot in PowerPoint

Unfortunately, Copilot does not allow you to upload an Excel file. Therefore, you need to copy the data from your Excel file and paste it into the Copilot chat to generate a presentation. Write the following command in Copilot: “Create a presentation using the following data” and paste the data copied from Excel. However, in Copilot at the moment, the maximum length of a request is 2000 characters. Therefore, when you try to insert data from a large Excel sheet, excess data is cut off and not considered during presentation generation.

Step 3: Review the presentation

Wait a few minutes, and the presentation will be generated and displayed on the screen. You can edit the finished presentation, change the design and text, add slides, and more.

In our experience the results based on copy pasted data from Excel were very poor in quality. So we decide to use Excel Copilot to see if it can create us some nice charts from our Excel file that we can then copy over into our PowerPoint presentation.

Step 4: Generate charts using Copilot in Excel

As you can see from the slides, Copilot in PowerPoint creates text analysis of the data and inserts images associated with the data into the presentation. However, if you want to automatically generate charts based on Excel data, you can do this using Copilot in Excel.

Open Copilot in Excel by clicking the Copilot button on the right of the toolbar.

Select a table with data and write the following request in the Copilot chat: “Create a chart that shows the dynamics of population change in different states”. Wait for the chart to be generated. Then click the “ Add to a new sheet ” or “Insert PivotChart” button to insert the chart into a new Excel sheet.

After the chart opens in a new Excel sheet, you can edit it by adding new columns. Once the chart is ready, copy it into your PowerPoint presentation.

Pros and Cons

• Increasing the efficiency and productivity of creating presentations;
• Smart suggestions for slide layout based on analysis of its content;
• The ability to automatically generate charts;
• Wide possibilities for customization of the finished presentation.
• A paid subscription is required;
• Security and privacy risks of providing data access to an AI cloud service;
• The maximum length of the request is 2000 characters;
• The presentation may contain incorrect data as AI is not 100% accurate.

Copilot can fast and easily create PowerPoint from Excel. It also provides intelligent advice on the presentation’s content and design. However, users may still miss advanced features like the possibility of uploading Excel files. Additionally, a paid subscription is required even to use the limited features of Copilot.

Method 3: Create Presentation from Excel using Beautiful.ai

Website: https://www.beautiful.ai/

Beautiful.ai is cloud-based AI-powered presentation generation software. It provides customers with many professionally designed templates, layouts, and design elements that can be customized to match customers’ content and brand. Beautiful.ai simplifies and speeds up the process of creating visually attractive presentations. It saves users time and effort with design assistance and intuitive AI-driven tools.

Beautiful.ai is a paid tool, so you need to create an account and subscribe before you can get started. You can use a 14-day trial version for the preliminary study.

Below is a quick overview of the steps needed to create PowerPoint from Excel using Beautiful.ai.

• Open Beautiful.ai: go to Beautiful.ai and create a new presentation.
• Load data: load data from an Excel file into Beautiful.ai.
• Generate a presentation: check the uploaded data and initiate the process of creating the presentation.
• Review presentation: review and, if necessary, edit the finished presentation.

Step 1: Open Beautiful.ai

Open Beautiful.ai and ensure you are logged in to your account and have a subscription. After that, on the left side of the page, click Create Presentation -> Generate with AI .

Step 2: Load data

At this step, you need to enter the presentation topic and upload data from Excel. Enter your presentation topic in the text box at the top of the page. After that, click on the Train AI with Additional Context button and select the data input method. Beautiful.ai does not provide the function of uploading Excel files, so in the drop-down list, select the Text option.

Step 3: Generate a presentation

Copy the data from your Excel and paste it into the text box that appears on the page. After that, click the Generate Presentation button.

Step 4: Review presentation

You can review and edit the created presentation. The presentation editor provides functions for changing colors, fonts, images, and layouts. You can completely change the content of the slides and add new ones. 

You can export the final presentation as PowerPoint and PDF files or Google Slides. 

• Simple and intuitive user interface;
• Visually attractive design;
• Integration with Google Slides, PowerPoint, and PDF;
• Ability to collaborate with team members in real-time and securely share presentations.
• It is not possible to import Excel files;
• A paid subscription is required to access Beautiful.ai features;
• Limited customization options compared to creating presentations manually. Users may find it difficult to create a custom design or include certain branding elements.
• There are possible errors, as the AI is not 100% precise.

Overall, Beautiful.ai allows customers to create visually attractive presentations, saving time and effort. However, it is worth analyzing all its pros and cons to determine whether it meets your needs.

Method 4: Create presentation content using ChatGPT

Website: https://chat.openai.com/

ChatGPT is an AI tool that can perform natural language processing and generate text based on input data. It can answer questions, create summaries, perform translation, and generate text that looks natural and fits the context.

It is important to note that ChatGPT does not currently provide the ability to create PowerPoint from Excel. However, you can use it to greatly simplify and speed up the process of creating a presentation. You can do this in two ways:

• Generate titles and slide content with ChatGPT that you can copy and paste into your presentation.
• Generate VBA code that you can use to create your presentation in PowerPoint.

To generate presentation content from Excel using ChatGPT, perform the following steps:

• Ask to create a table of contents for the presentation.
• Generate slides’ content.
• Review the proposed content.
• Copy the finished content in PowerPoint.

Step 1: Ask to create a table of contents for the presentation

Write the following request in the ChatGPT chat: “Please suggest a table of contents for 8 slides for a presentation for this data: ” and paste the data from your Excel file. With the paid version, you can directly upload XLS files in ChatGPT and let it generate stuff for presentations.

Review the proposed presentation structure and ask clarifying questions or request revisions.

Step 2: Generate slides’ content

Ask ChatGPT to generate a few key phrases for each slide. For example, write in the following request: “Please provide 3–5 bullet points about Population Trends in the United States.”

Step 3: Review the proposed content

Review suggested content for each slide. Ask for content to be corrected or clarified as needed. You can also adjust the content manually.

Step 4: Copy the finished content in PowerPoint

Create a presentation in PowerPoint. Copy the title and content to each slide separately. Customize the design and add images and your brand logo to suit your needs.

• On-demand generation of presentation content;
• Ability to send an unlimited number of requests for free;
• The possibility of improving the content of the presentation.
• It is not possible to generate a ready-made presentation;
• Unable to generate graphic content;
• You need to do many settings manually;
• To upload an Excel file, you need the paid version.

Using ChatGPT to create presentations can be helpful for efficiently generating ideas and content. However, you may also need to make manual edits and manually transfer content generated by ChatGPT to PowerPoint.

Therefore, AI-based tools, such as SlideSpeak, Microsoft Copilot, Beautiful.ai, and ChatGPT, provide powerful solutions for converting Excel files into PowerPoint presentations. These instruments allow you to create beautiful presentations, significantly saving time and effort.

However, before choosing the best tool for you, it is impotant to clearly define your needs and analyze the advantages and disadvantages of each instrument. You can utilize the trial version to try the functions of each tool and make an informed decision based on your individual needs.

Is it possible to convert Excel to PPT (with AI)?

Yes. There are free and paid AI tools that can upload data from Excel file, automatically analyze it, and create ready-made, visually attractive presentations customized to the content. Examples of such tools are SlideSpeak, Microsoft Copilot, and Beautiful.ai.

How to automatically create PowerPoint from Excel?

AI-based platforms like SlideSpeak, Microsoft Copilot, Beautiful.ai, and others allow you to create PowerPoint from Excel automatically. The step-by-step process of creating a presentation depends on the platform you choose. However, in general, to generate a presentation from an Excel file, you need to do the following:

• Select and upload an Excel file.
• Generation presentation.
• Review and adjust the finished presentation according to your requirements.

How to create PPT using ChatGPT?

ChatGPT cannot directly generate a PPT file. However, you can use it to generate the title and content of the slides and get advice on the visual design of your presentation. To do this, enter the appropriate requests in the ChatGPT chat and provide the data you need to generate a presentation. If you want a full AI solution to generate presentations with AI you can use SlideSpeak or design friendly tools like Canva.

Why don’t I have Copilot in PowerPoint?

For the Copilot button to appear in PowerPoint, you must have a paid Copilot subscription. Create a subscription and refresh PowerPoint. Then, the Copilot button should appear. You can find more info on this here: https://copilot.cloud.microsoft/en-us/copilot-powerpoint .

How can I create a PowerPoint with Copilot from an Excel file?

To create a PowerPoint presentation from an Excel file using Microsoft Copilot, make sure your Excel data is well-organized with clear column headings. Open Excel and then use Copilot to generate charts and graphs for your data. Afterwards copy the charts into PowerPoint. Microsoft Copilot in PowerPoint will then help you to figure out a suitable design for your slides. You have to use PowerPoint Copilot and Excel Copilot in combination to get good results.

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Excel Visualization: A Guide to Clear Data Presentation for Beginners

I once struggled with dull data tables.

Numbers clustered in rows and columns become a blur. But with Excel visualization , you can empower your audience to make informed decisions based on the data presented. Excel charts and graphs replace chaos, revealing patterns and trends.

Convey ideas efficiently with the right visual. It’s not just about creating a chart; it’s about making data understandable and engaging.

In this article, I’ll guide you step-by-step on transforming your Excel data into insightful visuals.

Let’s get started!

Table of Contents

Understanding the Basics of Excel Visualization

Excel provides various visualization options, whether 2D or 3D versions, standard, stacked, or 100% stacked options. It’s all about finding the right fit that best represents your data and message.

The Excel Charting Interface

Let’s start with creating a chart in Excel.

When you click on the Insert tab in Excel, you’ll see various chart types that you can use to visualize your data.

The Excel charting interface provides a wide range of options, from line and area charts to bar and column charts. When you click on a chart, the ‘ Chart Tools ’ contextual tab provides additional features for customizing your charts.

Types of Data for Visualization

Excel visualization data can be broadly categorized into numerical, categorical, and time-series data.

• Numerical data includes values that can be measured, such as sales figures or temperature readings.
• Categorical data includes information such as names, labels, or groups.
• Time-series data involves values measured over time, such as stock prices or website traffic.

Excel offers different chart types depending on your data type.

Selecting the Right Chart Type

Selecting the right chart type is half the battle for effective data visualization in Excel.

Pie charts are best for part-to-whole comparisons. Use line charts for time series or trends. Bar or column charts are the most suitable for categorical comparisons.

However, consider more advanced chart types for more complex data sets.

Scatter plots are excellent for correlation analysis , while histograms and box plots are ideal for distribution analysis of quantitative data.

It’s all about understanding your data and determining the best way to display it.

Steps for Visualizing Data in Excel – Creating Basic Charts

Creating basic charts in Excel is a fundamental skill for anyone looking to present data in a visual format.

Excel offers a variety of chart types, each with unique properties and use cases. The key to successful chart creation in Excel is understanding these different chart types and knowing how to present your data most effectively with them.

Organizing Your Data

Before you dive into creating Excel charts, it is crucial to organize your data correctly . 

Well-organized data will make the charting process easier and the resulting charts more meaningful. Ensure your data is clean, error-free, and arranged clearly and logically.

This will make it easier to select the data for your charts and create visuals that effectively communicate your data analysis results.

Pie and Donut Chart

Pie charts are popular for showing the proportion of different categories within a whole. While visually appealing, they are often misused and can lead to misleading interpretations.

Generally, they are most effective when comparing a few categories representing parts of a whole.

On the other hand, donut charts are a variation of pie charts with a hole in the middle (as the name implies!). Like pie charts, they can display multiple data series, but they should be used sparingly.

To create a pie chart in Excel:

• Select the data you want to visualize
• From the “ Insert ” tab, choose “ Pie ” from the chart options.
• You can customize your chart by changing the colors, adding labels, and adjusting other settings in the “ Format Chart Area ” pane.

Here’s a video guide on how to create a donut chart:

Line and Area Chart

Line and area charts are handy when dealing with time-series data . These charts plot data points on a graph and connect them with a line, allowing you to see trends over time. 

Check out this video for a step-by-step guide on how to create a line chart:

One of the business essentials when working with line and area charts is customizing the axis and gridlines. This can help make your chart more readable and meaningful .

The “ Format Axis ” pane allows you to customize the axis labels, adjust the scale, and add gridlines.

Column and Bar Graph

Bar and column charts are Excel’s most commonly used chart types. They are excellent for comparing different categories of data.

While bar charts and column charts are often used interchangeably, there is a difference: A bar chart presents data horizontally , while a column chart presents data vertically . This distinction can influence how easily your audience interprets the chart.

You can also choose between a stacked or clustered bar and column chart layout.

In a stacked chart , data series are stacked on each other, while in a clustered chart , they are placed side by side.

To create a bar or column chart:

• Select the data
• Then choose either “Bar” or “Column” from the chart options in the “ Insert ” tab
• Remember to format the chart and the axis labels to make the chart easier to understand

Advanced Charting Techniques

In this section, I’ll describe how to present complex data in a visually appealing and easily understandable format. Since each dataset is unique, treat these charts as ideas for meaningfully presenting your data.

Combination Charts

This type of chart combines the features of line and column charts, allowing you to present mixed data more comprehensively.

For example, when you have a target and actual data for comparison , a combination chart can be the perfect tool for visualization.

Clicking the Chart Design tab on the ribbon allows you to change the chart type and create a customized combination chart.

This allows you to have your target values in columns and the actual values marked along the line, which provides a clearer visualization of your data.

Trendlines and Data Analysis

Another essential feature of Excel charts is the ability to add trendlines. These can be linear, polynomial, or moving average trendlines.

A trendline graphically displays trends in your data , and you can extend it beyond the actual data to predict future values.

Along with trendlines, interpreting R-squared values is also crucial in data analysis. This will help you understand the relationship between your dependent and independent variables, thus enhancing your analysis results.

Check out our detailed how-to post on adding trendlines to Excel charts .

Conditional Formatting in Charts

Conditional formatting is another advanced charting technique in Excel that can enhance your data visualization. You can also add data bars, color scales, and icon sets.

These features allow you to customize your charts based on certain conditions, making it easier for your audience to understand your data. Applying these formatting options enables you to create more engaging and visually appealing charts for your data presentation.

Creating a Tornado Chart in Excel

Tornado charts are particularly effective when comparing and contrasting different variables . A well-crafted tornado chart can help you visualize how changes in several factors can impact a specific outcome – for example, the impact of inflation on NPV and IRR results.

Here’s a video showing you how to create a tornado chart:

Designing a Funnel Chart in Excel

Funnel Charts in Excel are highly effective tools for monitoring sales processes or any other process that narrows down over time.

Here are two quick methods for designing funnel charts in Excel:

Building a Waffle Chart in Excel

Waffle charts, also known as square pie or waffle bar charts, are a great way to visualize individual data points compared to the whole data set. They are a fun and engaging way to present percentages or proportions.

Here is a simple method for creating waffle charts:

Data Visualization Tips – Enhancing Chart Aesthetics

The aesthetics of your Excel chart play a significant role in how effectively your data is communicated.

A visually appealing chart is easier to understand and engages your audience. Enhancing chart aesthetics involves working with various chart elements and features, such as colors, styles, and data labels.

Adding data labels, for instance, provides additional information on your chart, making it easier to interpret.

Besides, you can customize the chart’s colors and styles to match your presentation theme or company branding.

Check out this post for more information on good dashboard design principles .

Working with Chart Elements

Working with chart elements can significantly improve the readability and effectiveness of your data visualization.

Some key chart elements you can manipulate include titles, legends, and data labels.

• Data labels provide additional context to your data and can be customized to suit your chart
• Modify axis labels and gridlines to adjust their appearance and improve readability. Check out this video on how to add gridlines to your Excel charts:

These chart elements can enhance your aesthetic appeal and make your data easier to interpret.

Customizing Chart Colors and Styles

Spicing up your Excel charts is easier than you think.

The ‘ Chart Design ‘ tab in the Excel ribbon allows you to alter your charts’ aesthetics significantly.

Navigate to the ‘ Chart Styles ‘ section, and you’ll see various styles for your chart. 

Looking for a bit more customization? No problem! Simply click the ‘ Change Colors ‘ dropdown and choose a color scheme.

You can use Excel’s preset color schemes or create a custom color palette for brand consistency. Minor visual changes can significantly affect your chart’s overall look and feel.

3D Charts and Effects

Adding a third dimension to your charts can make them pop . But be careful.

While 3D effects can add a specific wow factor, they can also lead to misinterpretations of your data if they are not used properly.

To add 3D effects to your charts, click the ‘ Chart Styles ‘ and choose a style with 3D effects. 

Remember, though, that 3D effects should be used sparingly and only when they can enhance the understanding of the data. Overuse of these effects can lead to cluttered, confusing charts. When it comes to 3D effects, less is often more .

Advanced Excel Graphics

Beyond the basic charts, Excel offers advanced graphics capabilities to take your data presentation to the next level.

This includes using Sparklines, shapes, and icons, among other features.

Sparklines are mini-charts within individual cells, each representing a row of data. They give a quick snapshot of trends, helping you understand your data at a glance.

Excel offers line, column, and win/loss types of Sparklines that you can add with the Quick Analysis tool.

Using Shapes and Icons

Remember to appropriately format these shapes and icons to convey the right message and not distract from the data.

Portraying a Story Through Data

Excel visualization is not just about creating charts or diagrams; it’s about telling a story with your data. This is where the concept of data storytelling comes in.

It’s about using visualization tools to highlight key points and trends in your data, making it easier for your audience to understand and absorb.

It’s not unlike creating a plot in a novel where rows and columns of data are the characters, and the chart is the narrative arc. Every element should convey your story effectively and compellingly, from simple bar charts to intricate trend analysis.

Exporting and Sharing Your Visualizations

Once you’ve created your data visualization in Excel, it’s important to know how to share it! This involves exporting the visual representation of data in a format that others can easily access.

Whether you’re sharing a simple bar graph or a complex infographic, the export method will depend on the intended use of the chart/graphic.

This process can be as simple as saving your chart as an image or embedding Excel visuals in PowerPoint presentations and documents.

Saving Charts as Images

One of the simplest ways to share visualizations is by saving them as images .

To do this, right-click the chart and select ‘Save as Picture.’ Several image formats are available, each with its uses.

For instance, JPEG is great for photographic images, while PNG is ideal for images with transparent backgrounds. However, it’s important to consider the resolution of your image. High resolution is crucial for clear, crisp images, especially if they’re intended for print.

Embedding Excel Visuals in Presentations and Documents

Embedding them in presentations and documents is another way to share your Excel visualizations.

This can be done in two ways: linking and embedding .

• Linking refers to connecting the original Excel file and the document where it’s inserted. Any changes made to the original file will automatically update in the document (assuming the link isn’t broken ).
• Embedding involves inserting a copy of the chart into the document. While this won’t update automatically, it ensures that the chart will always be available, regardless of the status of the original file.

Both methods have advantages and should be chosen based on your specific needs.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are some common mistakes for beginners to avoid in data visualization with excel.

Common mistakes include overcrowding the chart with too much data, using inappropriate chart types, neglecting to label axes or data points clearly, and choosing colors or styles that reduce readability.

What are the best practices for presenting Excel data visually to a non-technical audience?

Focus on simplicity and clarity .

Use straightforward chart types, avoid technical jargon, and highlight key takeaways. Ensure your charts are well-labeled, and use annotations or callouts to draw attention to important data points.

What are some resources to learn more about Excel visualization? 

For more tips and tricks, visit my YouTube channel . Alternatively, look at Chandoo’s training, where I learned many excellent dashboard design ideas.

Can Excel visualization help in career development?

Absolutely! Proficiency in Excel visualization is a valuable skill in many industries.

It’s especially relevant in fields like data science, finance, marketing, and others involving large amounts of data. Effectively communicating data through graphical representation can give you a significant advantage in your professional journey.

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How to create your presentation using Excel?

Hrideep barot.

• Presentation

MS- Excel, widely known as Excel, is famous for its spreadsheets and data handling. But little has been explored of this wonderful software other than the standard features.

Do you know that you can create and give your presentation using Excel? Are you curious of how to create a presentation in Excel?

Read till the end to get familiar with the steps and bonus tips in the end!

This is our game plan for this article.

Is excel presentation a good choice?

Step 1: choose a template, step 2: create slides, step 4: remove the grids, add a background picture, add colors to your data, font size matters, make use of cells, title slide, conclusion slide, product sales, comparative analysis, financial resolution or budget proposal, who all can benefit through excel presentations, does excel have presentation mode, how to export excel presentations.

Now, you might wonder: how can a simple spreadsheet be made presentable, especially a business report or pitch?

Well, using Excel might be more advantageous than you think. Here’s why:

Although PPT or PowerPoint Presentations gives a wide variety of options and templates to choose from, it can sometimes be too stretched out or contain lots of information that can be overwhelming.

Often, the main agenda of the presentation gets blurred, as we tend to emphasize and explain each and everything on the PPT.

If you want to give a crisp, short and effective presentation, then consider going for an Excel presentation.

There are fewer chances of your audience losing focus, as you emphasize only the needed information, especially if you are presenting a business report.

You will also save time of giving and making your presentation.

Now that you know why Excel is a good choice, let us see how we can use an Excel sheet in a presentation.

Creating a presentation in Excel

Creating a presentation in Excel can be the easiest way of making a presentation.

Follow these steps to make your presentation in excel:

The first step is to choose a template that goes with the aim of your presentation.

If your aim is to give a business presentation, you can go for templates like the ones seen in the above picture.

If you aim to present a business idea or budget, then you can choose templates such as planner and checklist or expense budget.

Choosing the right template would make things easier for you and your audience.

You might wonder how can I possibly create a slide in excel? Isn’t that a feature of PowerPoint?

Well, the idea is to create one similar to PowerPoint.

By using the sheets as slides, one can easily create an impactful presentation.

Make sure to name the sheets, and arrange them in order to give a smooth presentation.

Step 3: Organize your data

Now enter your required data and arrange it.

Simply select the required data by pressing the SHIFT key and use the ARROW keys to select.

Then, click on the Insert option from the menu tab and click on the Recommended Charts.

Now, select the type of chart you want.

Here are some possible options:

If you have data that depicts a financial report, and you want to explain the profits annually, then go for Line Graphs.

Remember to name your chart. You can click on the chart title to rename it.

If you want to present a monthly report on the expenses, then go for a pie chart.

Pie charts fit well when you present on a single aspect or topic.

Tables work for almost all purposes.

However, the information presented needs to be simple and short.

You can do this by making colored tables.

You can select your data, and from the Page Layout option from the menu, browse the themes and colors.

Go for lighter tones, as they look aesthetic and professional as well.

Also, the audience won’t find it difficult to read the data, which can happen if you use darker colors.

One of the main features of Excel are the grids, i.e., rows and columns.

Our last step is to get rid of the grids, as they can distract the audience and you may also run the risk of giving a shabby presentation.

To remove grids, go to the Page Layout option in the menu tab and unselect or uncheck the boxes under Gridlines and Headings.

After this step, your presentation would seem as if it was made using a PPT!

Tips for making a creative and professional presentation using Excel

Level up your presentation by setting a background picture in your Excel sheets!

In order to do this, go to the Page Layout and click on Background.

You can choose any of your saved pictures or choose from almost infinite options by searching one.

After you choose your picture, click on insert and your background picture is ready!

Last step is to remove the gridlines for a clean presentation.

You can also remove Headings and Formula Bar by unchecking them from the View tab.

It is quite a task to locate and understand data when everything is of the same color.

In other words, when you have a single color, say white, the audience would be busy tallying the data from right to left and not be able to concentrate on your presentation.

To resolve this issue, make your tables with two color tones.

You can choose them from Themes in Page Layout.

Here is the final result:

This table would take less time to locate the data in one row, as the color makes the task easy!

I bet you took some time to read this, especially if you are looking from a laptop or PC.

Did you feel any difference?

Your eyes were strained as you tried to read what was written.

Hence, make sure to have a decently larger font for making your information visible to everyone as not everyone sees your presentation from the same proximity as you.

If you don’t want a background picture, you can go for an image.

For adding an image, go to Insert and click on Illustrations.

You can add pictures, shapes, icons, 3D models and many more.

Remember to uncheck the Gridlines and Headings, before adding the images.

Cells in a spreadsheet can be used in creative ways.

Apart from entering data and doing calculations in a breeze, they can be turned into text boxes!

So make use of them as far as you can.

You can add in the main heading in the first sheet along with a background picture.

You can also use cells for short descriptions or notes below the tables or data for better comprehension for the viewers.

This is very important for all types of presentations and not just for Excel.

The main reason to categorize is to avoid “data dump”.

This happens when you put in too much information in one chart or sheet.

You might get confused or zoned out while presenting, and it is overwhelming from an audience’s perspective as well.

So, divide your data into various sheets and name them, ensuring they are in right order.

Doing so will also give your presentation a better clarity.

Sample Excel presentation

Suppose you are from the Sales department and are asked to give a presentation to the senior executives about the current vaccination drive status and future prospects.

Considering the period to be Jan-June 2021, here is a possible sample of how you can go about giving your presentation using Excel:

Here you can talk about your views on how the organization should carry forward the vaccination drive, and give suggestions on how to do it more efficiently.

What are some good Excel presentation topics?

Excel is a good medium to present product sales. The sample presentation above is a type of product sales.

It gives the organization a clear idea of the direction of the sales of a product and planning further marketing strategy.

If you have just begun your journey as an entrepreneur or are in the sales and marketing field, here is a useful article for you to enhance your skills of giving a business pitch to your clients! Pitch Perfectly: Crucial Public Speaking Tips for Startup Founders

Some topic ideas for product sales can be:

• Annual product review in XYZ branch
• Sales review of XYZ product
• Review of top-selling products in XYZ zone
• Sales promotion review 2020-21

Comparative analysis can be presented using Excel most effectively.

You can show data in simple charts and graphs, and compare the metrics using parameters such as time( weekly, monthly, annually) or regionally( within a company or branch, across branches, or internationally).

Some topics you can consider:

• Comparative analysis of student population taking XYZ stream/course
• Analyzing weekly donations to XYZ foundation
• Regional analysis of reported crimes in XYZ state
• Health and hygiene: A correlational study

Excel is a go-to application when it comes to finances.

With its easy tools and graphics, you can present budget proposals and financial resolutions with utmost ease.

You can consider these topics:

• FDIs for the year 2018-22
• Shares review 2020-21
• Annual review: Financial department
• Funds report: XYZ branch 2020-21

Although Excel is a great tool, it is not suitable for every type of presentations and professions.

It is an excellent medium for those engaging in quantitative data such as:

• researchers
• sales and marketing
• data analysts
• corporate executives
• logisticians, etc.

You can present your data in full-screen mode or presentation mode in Excel!

To do this, go to the View tab and select Full-screen mode, or press CTRL+ SHIFT+F1.

To go back to normal mode, right-click and choose the close full-screen option, or click on the three vertical dots on the top of the screen.

To export your Excel presentation, follow these steps!

STEP 1: Go to Files tab and select Export option.

STEP 2: In Export, click on create PDF/XPS document and name your file.

STEP 3: Click on Publish. Done!

Although we went through the steps of making an Excel presentation, do not leave the other aspect out!

Your body language and delivery style also matters!

If you are confused on what approach to take regarding body language while giving a speech, follow this article! To walk or stand still: How should you present when on stage?

For preparing your voice, follow along How to prepare your voice for a speech: Step-by-step guide .

We took a look into the steps for creating a creative and effective Excel presentation in just 4 steps!

Hope that the steps and tips would make your next Excel presentation a success and completely reinvent the way Excel is seen!

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5 Excel Presentation Tips for Reports

James palic.

• August 6, 2022

Last Updated on August 6, 2022

Microsoft Excel is the best tool in the Microsoft Office Suite for analyzing data. Yet Excel also has the charting and graphing features that help display your data in an easy to understand format.  Not every presentation has to be in PowerPoint. In fact, Microsoft Excel can be a better medium for presenting data in many cases.   Let’s discuss some Excel presentation tips that will help you present data in a compelling and visually appealing format.

1. Charts and Graphs

Effectively providing a visual summary of data using graphs and charts is an important presentation technique. But it’s just as easy to make a confusing chart as it is to make a helpful one. Cramming every bit of data possible into a visual can result in your presentation becoming cluttered and complicated. Will your audience be able to comprehend the data being portrayed? Could you possibly group or format it differently to make it more meaningful or easier to understand? Excel offers several choices for chart type that can turn the raw data of your excel workbook into an easy to understand format.  Excel charts can also be used as embeds in PowerPoint presentations. 

Make sure to use the excel chart type that best matches your data.  Pie charts are used for presenting categories as a percent of the total. Line graphs are used when you have data collected over a period of time.  Scatter plots are useful to show how two different values of a data set relate.  Give your visual tools some thought before you present and use them appropriately to produce a convincing story.

2. Diagrams

If you have hierarchical excel data or you are trying to describe a process or a series of steps, then a diagram may be the best option. Diagrams are great if you’re creating organization charts, flow charts, or other data that would benefit from a visual layout. The simplest way to gain and keep someone’s attention is to show them an image that is eye-catching and easy to understand .

3. Highlighting and Borders

To call attention to sections of data in your spreadsheets, such as summary totals and conditional formatting, use color highlighting along with a border to make that section stand out.  You can also create a key to describe what different highlight colors mean. Colors are visually appealing and draw the audience’s eyes to the specific information that you want to show them. If you provide a color-coded key, then they can easily determine what they’re looking at.

Excel has a wide selection of built-in themes that will distinguish column headers and other areas of the spreadsheet so that you present a pleasing color pallet. These themes provide a starting point for choosing fonts, formatting, and colors that are easy to read and visually appealing.  People associate a coordinated color pallet with professionally done work and will be more likely to pay attention if they believe you carefully constructed your presentation.

5. Sparklines

Sparklines are small charts or graphs inserted as the background of a single cell.  Sparklines are useful for illustrating trends or patterns in a data table without creating a full chart.  And, unlike charts, sparklines are automatically printed along with the worksheet.  Sparklines can be used to show trends or maximum and minimum values.  Since sparklines don’t take up as much space as traditional charts and can be placed next to the data being described, they can be an effective tool for analysis.

With the Excel data presentation tips above, you can format your Excel spreadsheets to make a big impact on your audience. If you’d like to learn more about Excel and how you can use it for presentations, contact ONLC today.

• Categories: Microsoft Excel

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Present Your Data Like a Pro

• Joel Schwartzberg

Demystify the numbers. Your audience will thank you.

While a good presentation has data, data alone doesn’t guarantee a good presentation. It’s all about how that data is presented. The quickest way to confuse your audience is by sharing too many details at once. The only data points you should share are those that significantly support your point — and ideally, one point per chart. To avoid the debacle of sheepishly translating hard-to-see numbers and labels, rehearse your presentation with colleagues sitting as far away as the actual audience would. While you’ve been working with the same chart for weeks or months, your audience will be exposed to it for mere seconds. Give them the best chance of comprehending your data by using simple, clear, and complete language to identify X and Y axes, pie pieces, bars, and other diagrammatic elements. Try to avoid abbreviations that aren’t obvious, and don’t assume labeled components on one slide will be remembered on subsequent slides. Every valuable chart or pie graph has an “Aha!” zone — a number or range of data that reveals something crucial to your point. Make sure you visually highlight the “Aha!” zone, reinforcing the moment by explaining it to your audience.

With so many ways to spin and distort information these days, a presentation needs to do more than simply share great ideas — it needs to support those ideas with credible data. That’s true whether you’re an executive pitching new business clients, a vendor selling her services, or a CEO making a case for change.

• JS Joel Schwartzberg oversees executive communications for a major national nonprofit, is a professional presentation coach, and is the author of Get to the Point! Sharpen Your Message and Make Your Words Matter and The Language of Leadership: How to Engage and Inspire Your Team . You can find him on LinkedIn and X. TheJoelTruth

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Four ways to improve your data presentation in Excel

   1.   Add a watermark text or a picture to the workbook with your company branding

See Adding watermarks to workbook for more details.

   2.   Add a background picture by choosing a graphics file to serve as a wallpaper for a spreadsheet like the wallpaper that you usually see on your Windows desktop:

See Adding a background image to the spreadsheet for more details.

   3.   Use conditional formatting to highlight cells in the worksheet:

See Applying Conditional Formatting for more details.

   4.   Use the drop-down list to simplify entering a value from the predefined set like countries, states, types, etc.

See Creating a Drop-Down List in a Cell for more details.

See also this tip in French: Quatre façons d'améliorer votre présentation de données dans Excel .

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Adding a header and footer to the worksheet

• GetSpreadsheet Expert
• Aug 12, 2023

5 TIPS FOR EXCEL PRESENTATION

Any report in excel is complete if it is presented well. When presenting in Excel, your spreadsheet must be professional, easy to understand, attractive, and linked to the content. A piece of work in Excel is a waste if just a glance at it can not understand it.

Here are five tips to make your Excel presentation attractive:

Naming of the spreadsheet

Naming a spreadsheet is an essential part of performing tasks in Excel. Always ensure that your worksheet's name is relevant to your project. It could be a phrase, sentence, or word related to your project. It must be understandable to you or anyone with whom you share the file. Suppose you are a Sales Assistant, recording sales data for different months in different sheets. In that case, you can name the sheet for January as “Jan_sales” similarly, “Feb_sales” and so on.

Header / Title

A header in Excel specifies the information stored in the respective column. It is essential that when you or any other person works on a spreadsheet, the header should speak out for the context of the data in it.

Use different fonts and sizes to specify the main header and sub–headers. It is recommended to middle align the titles.

Use of Fonts

Appropriate usage of fonts makes a powerful impact while presenting an Excel document. Always be cautious about choosing the right font for your spreadsheet. It must be professional. Some commonly used formal fonts include- Times New Roman, Calibri, Arial Narrow, etc.

One must avoid entering data in the Italic form.

Preferable font size for Excel spreadsheets is between 11-12.

While choosing the font color, one should use a simple contrast of two colors—one for the headings and another for the content.

Alignment of the Data

Alignment speaks for the data. Be careful while inserting numeric data in the spreadsheet. Numerical data is always right aligned so that the units can be identified quickly and distinguished from text data.

The text should be left aligned.

Word wrap must be used while inserting text data to eliminate overlapping words, making the worksheet look messy.

Use Graphs, Charts and Tables

Visual representation always completes your presentation. It makes your raw data easy to understand at a glance. Excel has diverse graphics that can be used to present data, but you must choose the correct chart or graph form.

Almost everyone uses Excel in their work nowadays, but to make a difference, you need to work in a way that makes your performed tasks look unique and presentable. Try using the five tips to make data presentable in Excel, and let us know in the comments section how it helped you.

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How to Create Your Presentation Using Excel

When we talk about Spreadsheets, we all think of the intersection of rows and columns. But, what we were really missing out on was that it can be used for making presentations on it. 

While PowerPoint has been the go-to platform for creating presentations, many of us ignore the powerful features of Microsoft Excel for this purpose. 

In this detailed article, let’s explore how to make a presentation using Excel to create engaging and dynamic presentations that captivate your audience.

1. get a template online.

The first step in creating a presentation using Excel is to find a template according to your choice. 

There are many websites that offer pre-designed templates specifically made for Excel presentations. These templates provide a starting point, which helps you in organizing your content effectively. 

Select from a range of customizable templates that perfectly complement your presentation theme. Seamlessly integrate content, including titles, subtitles, and key points, to maintain a professional and cohesive appearance. Save time while enhancing your presentation with our user-friendly templates. Interested in mastering Excel? Explore our Advanced Excel course in Gurgaon for comprehensive learning.

2. Name your worksheets correctly

The second step in making a presentation using excel , is giving your worksheet an appropriate name. Make sure that each worksheet has a clear and descriptive name that reflects its content. This not only helps you in staying organized during the creation process but also makes navigation easy when presenting. 

A well-named worksheet is a roadmap for both you and your audience, ensuring a smooth flow from one section to another. Avoid generic names like “Sheet1” and opt for titles that convey the purpose or topic, enhancing the overall professionalism of your presentation.

3. Define your header/title

A compelling header or title is crucial for grabbing your audience’s attention. In Excel presentations, the header serves as the focal point, setting the tone for the entire document. 

Choose a font that aligns with the overall theme and ensure the title is clear, concise, and relevant to your topic. Experiment with font sizes and styles to find the perfect balance that makes your title stand out without overpowering the rest of the content. 

Remember, a well-crafted header not only informs but also entices your audience to delve into the presentation.

4. Dos and don’ts of fonts

Selecting the right font type is paramount in ensuring readability and visual appeal. Stick to professional and easily readable fonts such as Arial, Calibri, or Times New Roman. Avoid overly decorative fonts that may distract or make the text difficult to comprehend. Consistency in font type contributes to a cohesive and polished presentation.

Balancing font size is essential to maintain readability throughout your presentation. Use larger fonts for titles and headings, gradually scaling down for subheadings and body text. Ensure that even those at the back of the room can comfortably read the content. Consistent font sizing enhances visual harmony and professionalism.

The color of your text can significantly impact the overall aesthetics of your presentation. Opt for contrasting colors to ensure text is easily distinguishable from the background. Maintain a consistent color scheme that aligns with your brand or theme. Avoid using too many colors, as it can lead to a cluttered and unprofessional look.

Consistent text alignment adds a sense of order to your presentation. Align titles, headings, and body text uniformly to create a visually pleasing layout. Excel provides options for left, right, center, and justified alignment. Experiment with different alignments to find the one that complements your content and enhances the overall flow of information.

5. Create space for breathing room

One common mistake in Excel presentations is overcrowding the slides with excessive information. To enhance readability and visual appeal, create sufficient breathing room around text and graphics. 

Adequate spacing improves focus, prevents visual clutter, and ensures that each element has room to shine. Use margins effectively, and don’t hesitate to leave empty space to guide your audience’s eyes to the most critical points. Remember, simplicity can be a powerful tool in delivering a clear and impactful message.

Learn More About Advance Excel Formulas And Functions

6. Add an Image

Visual elements, such as images, play a crucial role in engaging your audience. Excel allows you to seamlessly integrate images into your presentation, adding a dynamic and aesthetic dimension. Choose high-quality images that enhance your content and align with your message. 

Ensure that images are appropriately sized and positioned for optimal impact. Whether it’s a relevant graph, chart, or illustrative image, incorporating visuals into your Excel presentation can transform it from mundane to memorable.

7. Go off the grid 

Excel’s grid structure is excellent for data organization, but it can limit creativity in presentations. To break free from the grid, use text boxes, shapes, and other design elements to create a visually appealing layout. 

Experiment with layering, color gradients, and borders to add depth to your slides. Going off the grid allows you to customize the look of your presentation, making it more visually stimulating and tailored to your unique style.

8. Zebra stripes: Excel jungle law

Incorporate zebra striping to enhance the readability of tables and data sets while making your presentation using excel . Alternating row colors make it easier for your audience to follow information across rows, reducing the risk of data misinterpretation. 

Excel’s conditional formatting feature simplifies the process of adding zebra stripes, ensuring a polished and professional appearance. This subtle design element not only improves aesthetics but also facilitates a smoother comprehension of tabular data.

9. Use charts, tables, and graphs

Excel’s prowess in data visualization is a powerful tool for presentations. Convert your raw data into meaningful charts and graphs to engage your audience visually. From pie charts to bar graphs, Excel offers a range of options. Inserting a chart is as simple as selecting your data, navigating to the ‘Insert’ tab, and choosing the desired chart type.

Tables, on the other hand, are effective for presenting structured information. Excel makes it easy to create tables with the ‘Insert Table’ feature, allowing you to sort and filter data effortlessly.

10. Create cell styles

Excel’s cell styles allow you to customize the appearance of individual cells, further refining the visual appeal of your presentation. Experiment with different styles to highlight important data points, create emphasis, or maintain a consistent theme. 

Consistent cell styling contributes to a cohesive and polished look, showcasing attention to detail. Whether it’s bolding key figures, applying color-coded formatting, or utilizing other cell styling options, these subtle touches can elevate the professionalism of your presentation.

11. Show restraint

While Excel offers a myriad of design options, it’s crucial to exercise restraint to avoid overwhelming your audience. Stick to a cohesive color scheme, consistent fonts, and a balanced layout. 

Resist the temptation to overuse animations or flashy transitions that may distract from your message. A minimalist approach can be more impactful, ensuring that your content remains the focal point. Remember, the goal is to enhance, not overshadow, the information you’re presenting.

Final Verdict

Microsoft Excel can be a powerful ally in creating captivating presentations. By following the tips outlined in this guide, you can harness the full potential of Excel’s formatting and visualization features. 

From selecting the right font to incorporating images and charts, each element plays a role in delivering a compelling message. Remember to maintain consistency in design, use white space wisely, and leverage Excel’s functionalities to enhance the overall visual appeal. 

With these strategies, you can turn a seemingly mundane spreadsheet tool into a dynamic platform for effective presentations. 

Excel’s versatility extends far beyond numbers – it’s time to unlock its potential for impactful storytelling. And if you wish to learn more about excel, check other excel and many more courses of Gyansetu to upskill yourself in the future-driven field. 

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The 7 Golden Rules of Excel Spreadsheet Design

This guide on spreadsheet design is suitable for Excel 2016, 2019, 2021, and Microsoft 365 versions 

Design better spreadsheets by implementing the ‘golden rules’ of good spreadsheet design. 

You’ll learn:

What is a Good Spreadsheet Design?

• Rule 1 – Adopt a Standard And Stick To It  

Rule 2 – Know Your Audience

Rule 3 – include a welcome sheet, rule 4 – separate your data, rule 5 – design for longevity, rule 6 – use consistent, clear structure, rule 7 – control data input.

When creating a new Excel workbook, most of us simply dive in and start inputting data without giving too much thought to longevity, ease of use, and future-proofing. Neglecting to think about these things can result in a spreadsheet that is inconsistent, full of errors, and hard to update. 

This is particularly important when sharing spreadsheets with others. Spreadsheets that make sense to you, might be confusing to your colleagues. 

Imagine the scenario. You’ve spent two weeks putting together an amazing spreadsheet with lots of complex formulas and formatting. You share it with your wider team and within a day, you’re fielding lots of questions about the spreadsheet or even worse trying to fix accidental errors from less-skilled staff members. 

It might not be clear to your colleagues where to input data, which cells can be edited, and which ones should be left alone. People might have varying levels of skill in Excel and accidentally edit a formula, effectively breaking it. 

Or, maybe you put together a spreadsheet 6 months ago and are now revisiting it. Can you remember what the formatting in each cell means? Or why did you put that formula in a cell?

Employing these basic principles when creating a spreadsheet is not only going to give others guidance when working on your spreadsheet but also minimize the amount of time you spend fixing issues or updating the data. 

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Excel Spreadsheet Design – 7 Golden Rules

Rule 1 – adopt a standard and stick to it .

It’s important to adopt a consistent standard when working on a spreadsheet. It might be that you work at an organization that has its own standard with all colours and fonts used adhering to company branding guidelines. 

Regardless, it’s important to keep fonts, colours, cell styles, tab colours, and file names consistent. 

Fonts and Colors

Spreadsheets that contain multiple font styles can be difficult to read. It’s better to stick to one or two and ensure that the fonts you pick are professional. In general, fonts like Arial, Calibri, and Cambria work best. Stay away from anything cursive or quirky like Comic Sans. 

Colors should also be consistent but you don’t necessarily only have to use one color. If you have a theme applied, choosing colors from within the theme palette works well. Ensure it’s easy to read the data and you don’t have a light font on a light background and vice versa. 

Changing the color of spreadsheet tabs can be an effective way of grouping worksheets. For example, you might have your calculations on one worksheet, analysis on three other worksheets, and then a dashboard on another. 

Color coding the tabs so that worksheets of the same type are grouped by color is a good, visual way of organizing data.

• Right-click on the tab. 
• Choose Tab Color from the menu. 
• Select a color from the palette. 

Implement a consistent file naming convention so that it’s easy to identify files. For example, if you have a folder of ‘January Invoices’, consider naming them ‘INV-JAN-03.xls’, ‘INV-JAN-04.xls’. Or maybe name them by client, ‘INV_Microsoft_01032022’ etc. 

This makes your files easy to search for and find in File Explorer and gives you an idea of the file contents without opening it first. 

Whilst your Excel skills might be top-notch, other people might not be. If you are sharing the spreadsheets you create with others it’s important to ensure that everyone who will be working on that spreadsheet has the appropriate level of knowledge and competence in Excel. 

If you design a spreadsheet that contains complex formulas and you expect others to update those formulas or perform calculations, you need to ensure they have had the appropriate level of training or you will spend a lot of time fielding questions or fixing errors. 

It’s important to design a spreadsheet that is appropriate for your audience. Who will be looking at it? Maybe it’s for internal use. Maybe it’s for your manager. It could be sent out to a client or key stakeholders. Or, maybe it’s for a personal project like an after-school club. This will greatly affect how you design your spreadsheet. 

Professional spreadsheets for business use should be designed as such. Keep colors and fonts clean and simple. Ensure the data is easy to read and interpret. Try to keep any images or icons professional and definitely avoid cartoon images (clip-art style) and lurid colors. Selecting images from Excel’s stock image library or a professional image website like The Noun Project (icons) or Pexels (Images) works best. 

Personal projects are more forgiving and it might be appropriate for your audience to inject a little fun with images, cartoons, bright colors, and quirky font. 

Consider your audience. Design appropriately. 

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Where possible, include a ‘Welcome Sheet’ with instructions on how to use the spreadsheet. This can be extremely helpful to colleagues reviewing the spreadsheet for the first time. 

Add valuable instructions. Let them know which cells they should be inputting data into and which cells should be left alone. Consider adding a legend or a key to explain the formatting used in the spreadsheet. Provide guidance on how the spreadsheet should be used, where it should be saved, and any version control instructions. 

This will minimize the number of questions you are asked about the spreadsheet leaving you time to work on other projects without interruption. 

Keep different types of data on separate worksheets. For example, if you want to analyze sales data with PivotTables and Pivot Charts, ensure that you have the source data on one worksheet, calculations on another and then any PivotTables, charts, or visuals on another worksheet. 

If we put everything on one worksheet, it’s not organized, it’s hard to interpret, and can be confusing for the person reading the spreadsheet. Ensure spreadsheet tabs are clearly named. 

Future-proof your spreadsheets and allow for changes. Sometimes, when we create a spreadsheet, we don’t think about how easy it will be to update next month or in 6 months’ time. Think about using Excel tables for large datasets. Excel tables auto-expand to accommodate any new data added so formulas and calculations that use the table data can be updated with the click of one button. 

Avoid hard-coding values into cells. For example, if we have a spreadsheet of sales information and we need to add 15% sales tax to each product, don’t hard-code ‘15%’ into the SUM calculation. If the sales tax rate changes, we would need to find each formula that contains the hard-coded value and change it. 

Instead, use cell references. If the sales tax rate changes, the value only needs to be updated in cell M4 and all formulas will update automatically. 

Spreadsheets should be as simple, clear, and consistent as possible. Remove unnecessary data and formatting to reduce clutter. Think about using cell styles to make it clear which cells are input cells, which are calculation cells, and which contain headings and warning messages.

• Select the cell/cells. 
• From the Home tab, in the Styles group, click Cell Styles . 
• Choose an appropriate cell style from the gallery. 

 If you use cell styles in a worksheet, add a legend to the welcome sheet to explain the formatting.  

Spreadsheets can look cleaner and more professional by removing the gridlines. 

• From the View tab, in the Show group, remove the tick from Gridlines . 

Suggested Reads:

How to Add a Watermark in Excel? 2 Easy Methods

How to Remove Hyperlinks in Excel? 3 Easy Methods

How to Use the Format Painter Excel Feature? — 3 Bonus Tips

Keep worksheets as error-free as possible by using data validation and protection. The more people that have access to a workbook, the more likely it is that something will be changed in error or formulas will get broken. As the spreadsheet owner, you should think about implementing controls to stop this from happening. 

Data validation is a great way of controlling what can be input into a cell or cells. Create data validation drop-down lists to prevent users from inputting anything you haven’t specified. Add warning messages and helpful instructional text to guide users towards the correct inputs. 

• From the Data tab, in the Data Tools group, select Data Validation . 

Another way of controlling user input is to protect the workbook, the worksheet or specific cells. When you protect a worksheet, you can choose to add a password. Only users that have the password will be able to make changes. You can also choose to keep certain parts of the worksheet unlocked if required. Protection will only be applied to the worksheet. 

• From the Review tab, in the Protect group, click Protect Sheet . 
• Enter a password (if required). 
• Choose which parts of the worksheet you would like users to be able to change. 

Protecting the workbook will protect all worksheets within that workbook. It protects the structure of the workbook so users cannot add new worksheets, delete worksheets, move or copy worksheets, rename or delete. 

• From the Review tab, in the Protect group, click Protect Workbook . 

We can also lock specific cells on a worksheet. This is useful if you have complex formulas that you don’t want to be changed. 

• Select the cells you want users to be able to edit. 
• Press CTRL+1 to open the Format Cells dialog box. 
• Go to the Protection tab. 
• Remove the tick from Locked . 

• From the Review tab, in the Protection group, click Protect Sheet . 

These are just some of the ‘golden rules’ you might think about implementing when designing spreadsheets. For further reading, please check out the following links:

PerfectXL – Create and Maintain Good Spreadsheets

GeekGirls – Spreadsheeting II: Good Spreadsheet Design

Let’s Wrap Up

That’s all folks. In this guide, I have given you the seven golden rules of Excel spreadsheet design. Do keep them in mind and apply them in your upcoming projects. Working with your spreadsheets will be a delightful experience.

For more high-quality guides on Excel do check out our free  Excel resources centre . 

Do you want to master your Excel Skills? Click  here  for in-depth courses that explain everything you need.

Deborah Ashby

Deborah Ashby is a TAP Accredited IT Trainer, specializing in the design, delivery, and facilitation of Microsoft courses both online and in the classroom.She has over 11 years of IT Training Experience and 24 years in the IT Industry. To date, she's trained over 10,000 people in the UK and overseas at companies such as HMRC, the Metropolitan Police, Parliament, SKY, Microsoft, Kew Gardens, Norton Rose Fulbright LLP.She's a qualified MOS Master for 2010, 2013, and 2016 editions of Microsoft Office and is COLF and TAP Accredited and a member of The British Learning Institute.

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10 Design Tips to Create Beautiful Excel Charts and Graphs in 2021

Updated: August 11, 2022

Published: September 24, 2015

It's really tempting to let terrible Excel graphs creep into your marketing. Your boss doesn't care about little things like how graphs look, right? And whatever Excel comes up with as the default is probably fine ... right?

Not really. You're using data to spur action. Maybe you pull data to convince your boss to adopt inbound marketing , give you an extra sliver of budget, or adjust your team's strategy -- among other things. Regardless of what you use data for, you need it to be convincing -- and if you display data poorly, the meaning of your data is more likely to get lost.

Note: I'm using Excel for Mac 2011. If you're using another version or operating system, implementing the following tips may look different. 

Free Excel Graph Templates

Tired of struggling with spreadsheets? These free Microsoft Excel Graph Generator Templates can help.

• Simple, customizable graph designs.
• Data visualization tips & instructions.
• Templates for two, three, four, and five-variable graph templates.

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Excel Design Tricks for Sprucing Up Ugly Charts and Graphs in Microsoft Excel

1) pick the right graph..

Before you start tweaking design elements, you need to know that your data is displayed in the optimal format. Bar, pie, and line charts all tell different stories about your data -- you need to choose the best one to tell the story you want.

Bar graphs and pie graphs help you compare categories. Pie graphs usually compare parts of a whole, while bar graphs can compare pretty much anything ... which means it's often best to just use a bar graph. Bar graphs are easier to read and highlight incremental differences between categories, so they're a good go-to. Pie graphs are best used when one of the categories is way larger than the other.

Want to see the difference? Here's an example of the same data set displayed as a pie graph and a bar graph:

Image Credit: Wikimedia

Line charts, which look kind of like a horizontal version of bar charts, help you display a changing trend over time. You can track multiple values over that time, but the key to a line chart is the time component.

To turn your data into one of these charts in Excel, highlight the data you want to morph into a chart, then choose "Charts" in the top navigation (or select "Insert" > "Charts" if you have a different version). Then choose the chart most appropriate for your data.

2) Sort bar graph data so it's intuitive.

If you're using a bar graph to display your data, this tip can make a big difference. Most bar graphs look like this:

Image Credit: Search Engine Land

They're kinda random. You spend just a fraction of a second too long figuring out which ones are outliers. Instead, you should reorder your data points to go from largest to smallest. Here's what that looks like: 

If your bar graph is horizontal, larger values should be at the top. If your bar graph is vertical, order them from left to right. Why? That's how people read English. (If you're presenting this data in another language where that isn't true, change up your order to better reflect reading patterns.)

To order the graphs in Excel, you'll need to sort the data from largest to smallest. Click 'Data,' choose 'Sort,' and select how you'd like to sort everything. 

3) Shorten Y-axis labels.

Long Y-axis labels, like large number values, take up a lot of space and can look a little messy, like in the chart below:

Enter the custom format code  \$0,, \m  (as shown below) and click "OK" to close.

5) Remove default line margins.

Unless you remove them from your line charts, Excel will automatically add margins before the first data point and after the last data point, as you can see on the left in the image below. But, as you can see on the right, line charts often look better without these margins:

7) Stay away from 3D effects.

This falls under the previous bullet point, but I wanted to include it as its own point because it's one of the most overused data visualization effects. 

To make data look  extra fancy, people will often make bar, line, and pie graphs 3D -- but it actually just makes the data harder to read. Because of the way the data is tilted, it gives the reader a skewed sense of what the data actually means. Since you're using data to tell a broad story, you don't want to weaken your argument due to poor design. See how different a pie chart looks when it's in 2D versus 3D?

Image Credit: visual.ly

And if you actually look at the area each section takes up on the screen, you'll see why it's easy to misinterpret 3D graphs:

To remove the 3D styling from your graphs, double-click on the bars, lines, or pie sections you'd like to change, choose "3D Format" and set "Top'"and "Bottom" to "None."

8) Delete the legend if it's not necessary.

Legends tell you information you can read easily on the graph. If you have a ton of X-axis categories or multiple data points per category, then using legends makes sense. But if you're only comparing a few data points, they can be pretty useless. So if that's the case, just delete the legend altogether.

To delete a legend in Excel, you can just double-click on the legend text box, then hit "Delete" on your keyboard:

9) Include branded colors.

The colors that come preset in Excel are pretty drab. One quick way to spruce them up is to make them your brand's colors. It's a little detail that'll make your charts look slick and clean. 

To ensure you're always using the proper brand colors, you'll need to grab the HEX color code of your brand's colors. Then, plop that code into this HEX --> RBG color converter . In Excel, double-click on the parts of your graph you'd like to change the color of. Under "Fill," choose "Color" > "More Colors."

In the popup window, select the second icon from the left with the sliders. See that little dropdown? Choose "RGB Sliders," then input the RGB numbers you found in the beginning. Voila! Perfectly on-brand colors and a gorgeous graph. 

10) Add a shaded area to a line chart.

Ever seen a line chart with a shaded area below the line? They can make your line chart stand out.

In the menu that appears, choose the first type under the "Area" category.

Your new line chart will look something like this:

Then, under "Border Color," choose "Solid Fill." Under "Fill Color," choose the same  color as the line in the chart. Change your transparency to the same transparency as the border color's transparency.

Want more Excel tips? Check out these resources for learning Excel online.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in 2014, and has since been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

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How to Make Excel Look Pretty (16 Easy Formats)

Method 1 – Starting the Dataset from Cell B2

• Select Column A and right-click on it.
• That select Insert from the Context Menu .
• This will insert a new column and shift the data toward the right .

You can also select Column A and use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + plus(+) to insert a new column and shift the data toward the right .

• The new starting column of the dataset is Column B .

• Select Row 1 and right-click on it.

• Select Insert from the Context Menu .
• This will insert a new row and shift the data downward .

You can also select Row 1 and use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + plus(+) to insert a new row.

• The new starting row of the dataset is Row 2 .

Method 2 – Keeping the Row Height Constant to Make Excel Look Pretty

• Select cell B2 and press Ctrl + Shift + End to select the entire dataset.

• Go to the Home tab.
• Select Cells .
• From the Format group, select Row Height .

• A Row Height dialog box will appear.
• Set the Row Height to 20.

• The cells of the dataset have become larger and more visible.

Method 3 – Adjusting Column Width

• From the Format group, select Column Width .

• A Column Width dialog box will appear.
• Put 10 in the Colum Width box.

• To manually set column width, double-click in between the Column line.
• Repeat the procedure for all the Columns that need adjustment.

• You can see adjusted data in the cells.

Method 4 – Use the Merge and Center Feature to Make Excel Look Pretty

• Select cells B2 , C2 , D2 , E2 , and F2 . This will keep the main heading on the top of cells B2 to F2 .
• From the Alignment group, select Merge & Center .

• The main heading takes on the top and center position of the dataset.

Method 5 – Using Cell Styles Features for Main Heading

• Select the main heading and go to the Home tab.
• From Cell Styles , select Heading 2 .

• The main heading becomes more presentable.

Method 6 – Using Different Font Sizes for Main Heading, Column Heading, and Cell Content

• In the Font Size box, type 16 .

You can also select Font Size 16 by clicking on the downward arrow of the Font Size box and selecting 16 .

• You can see the Font Size of the main heading is set to 16 .

• Select the column headings and go to the Home tab.
• In the Font Size box, type 14 .

You can also select Font Size 14 by clicking on the downward arrow of the Font Size box and selecting 14 .

• Double-click on the line between the columns . This will make the column wide and adjust the cell content in it.
• Repeat this process for all the columns that need adjustment.

• You can see the adjusted column headings in the cells.
• Drag the column toward the right by left-clicking and holding. Drag the column until it looks large enough and release the mouse button.
• Repeat this process for every column to make them wider.

• You can see the columns now become much wider, and the dataset looks more readable.

• Select the cells of the dataset and go to the Home tab.
• In the Font Size box, type 12 .

You can also select Font Size 12 by clicking on the downward arrow of the Font Size box and selecting 12 .

• You can see the Font Size of the cells of the dataset is set to 12 .

Read More:  How to Make Picture Background Transparent in Excel

Method 7 – Use an Eye-Catching Font Type to Make Excel Look Pretty

• First of all, select the entire dataset along with the main heading >> go to the Home tab.
• Click on the downward arrow of the Font box.

• Select a Font you like.

• The dataset looks more presentable.

Method 8 – Applying Different Fill Colors for the Main Heading and Column Heading

• From the Font group, click on Fill color .

• Hover over different colors and you can see the live preview. Click to choose a color.
• We selected Green, Accent 6, and Lighter 80% for our main heading. You can see the preview of the color on the main heading cell.
• You can select any presentable color as the Fill Color .

• From the Font group, click on the drop-down for Fill color .

• Choose a color you like.

• Here’s how we formatted the cells:

Method 9 – Use the Middle and Center Alignment to Make Excel Look Pretty

• Select the entire dataset along with the main heading.
• From the alignment group, select both the Middle and Center alignments .

Method 10 – Making the Column Headings Bold

• From the Font group, select Bold .

You can also select the column headings and press Ctrl + B  to Bold them .

• You can see the column headings look more presentable.

Method 11 – Using the Number Format for Currency

• Select the entire cells of the Salary column and go to the Home tab.
• From the Number group, click on the downward arrow of the Number Format box.

• Select Currency .

• You can see the Salary column has the Currency symbol in it.

Read More: How to Make Excel Spreadsheet Colorful

Method 12 – Adding Borders to Make Excel Look Pretty

• Select the entire dataset excluding the main heading.
• From the Font group, click on the drop-down on the Borders box.

• Select All Borders .
• You can choose any other border type you like.

• The dataset looks more clear and more visible.

Method 13 – Use the Light Zebra Stripe Formatting for Data

• Select the dataset from cells B5:F11 .
• From the Styles group, select Conditional Formatting .

• Select New Rule .

• A New Formatting Rule dialog box will appear.
• From Select a Rule Type select Use a formula to determine which cells to format .
• Put the following formula in the Format values where this formula is true box:
• Click on Format .

• Choose a Fill color from the Fill tab.

• You can see the Preview of the color in the New Formatting Rule dialog box.

• There’s a light stripe in the dataset now for every second value.

Method 14 – Removing Grid Lines to Make Excel Look Pretty

• Go to the View tab.
• In the Show group, you can see that Gridlines is marked .
• Uunmark the Gridlines .

• Here’s the result.

Method 15 – Freeze the Column Heading

• Select cell B5 .
• From the Freeze Panes group, select Freeze Panes .

• The Row and Column before cell B5 get frozen.

Method 16 – Use Colorful Tabs in the Workbook

We will add different colors to the sheet name to make Excel look pretty.

• Right-click on a Sheet Name.
• Select Tab Color from the Context Menu .
• Select a color.

We selected a Blue color . You can select any color that looks presentable.

• We also selected colored tabs for sheets named Y Company and Z Company .

Things to Remember

• Make sure the Column Width is large enough to make your column wider. If, however, the columns still remain congested, you can always manually set a Column Width.
• If you choose a dark Fill Color for your main headings and column headings, make sure to choose a light Text Color . Otherwise, the Text will not be visible properly.
• Along with that, if you choose a light Fill Color for your main heading and column heading, keep the Text Color to a dark one.
• If you need, you can mark different cells with Text or Fill Color .
• Besides Arial , you can select any Font type for your dataset as long as they make Excel look pretty.
• If you have a large dataset, where you need to scroll down, you have to use Freeze Pane. Otherwise, for a small dataset, where you do not need to scroll down you should avoid adding Freeze Pane.

Practice Section

You can download the Excel file and go to the Do Yourself sheet. Format the following dataset to make Excel look pretty .

Download the Practice Workbook

Related Articles

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• How to Print Background in Excel

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Afia Aziz Kona, a graduate of NAME from Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology, Bangladesh, serves as a technical content creator in the ExcelDemy project. Possessing a passion for innovation and critical thinking, she actively embraces challenges. Beyond her engineering background, Afia exhibits a keen interest in Excel, having authored numerous articles on Excel & VBA-related issues to simplify the experience for users facing obstacles in Excel. Apart from creating Excel tutorials, she is also interested... Read Full Bio

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In today’s fast-paced world, a company’s success hinges on having the right people in the right roles. But how do you ensure your team is equipped to meet your goals?

This is where staffing plans come into play. They’re your roadmap to identifying skills gaps, hiring top talent, and efficiently managing the human resources in your organization.

Creating a staffing plan from scratch can be time-consuming, but there’s a smarter way—using a ready-made staffing plan template—that simplifies the process.

Curious to learn more? Dive in to discover what makes a great staffing plan template and explore the top ten free templates that will streamline your hiring process. 

What Are Staffing Plan Templates? 

What makes a good staffing plan template , 1. clickup staffing plan whiteboard template, 2. clickup staffing matrix template, 3. clickup recruitment strategy document template, 4. clickup succession planning template, 5. clickup recruiting and hiring template, 6. clickup recruitment action plan template, 7. clickup hiring selection matrix template, 8. excel it project staffing plan template by templatelab, 9. word restaurant staffing plan template by templatelab, 10. presentation staffing plan template by venngage, craft effective staffing plans with clickup .

A staffing plan is a strategic tool that Human Resource (HR) departments create and use to evaluate the current and future staffing needs of a company.

To make this process easier, staffing plan templates offer customizable frameworks that HR managers can run with. These templates allow HR professionals to determine the right number and types of employees needed to achieve both project-specific and organizational goals.

By using these templates, HR teams can better assess available resources, pinpoint gaps, and develop strategies to fill those gaps effectively. As a result, staffing plan templates not only save time but also support informed decisions about workforce planning and resource allocation , ultimately streamlining your company’s staffing processes.

A good staffing model or staffing plan template is organized, customizable, and user-friendly. It is made up of the following elements:

• Structured layout: A good staffing template is well-structured, with clearly defined sections that make it easy to navigate
• Customizable sections: It allows you to adjust sections to meet your company’s specific staffing needs
• Skill and role mapping: It features sections for mapping current employee skills and job roles against project requirements. This helps you identify gaps in skills and labor supply and devise strategies to fill them
• Resource allocation planning: It includes sections to help you assess resource requirements and accordingly distribute resources across teams or departments for various projects
• Budget integration: It integrates budget considerations for projects, helping you hire new candidates and manage resources without exceeding the budget
• Future staffing forecasting: It provides the space for predicting future staffing needs based on project requirements and business strategy

10 Free Staffing Plan Templates

Finding the right staffing plan template can make all the difference in human resource management and your company’s success. 

To save you time, we’ve compiled a list of the best tools for streamlining your staffing process. Among them is ClickUp, a standout productivity tool offering an all-in-one HR management platform.

ClickUp for HR Teams not only simplifies hiring and onboarding but also makes employee management more efficient.

Plus, it offers free templates to help you craft the perfect staffing plan.

Let’s explore the top staffing plan templates in detail. 

When you need a quick understanding of the number and types of personnel your business requires, ClickUp’s Staffing Plan Whiteboard Template is one of the best tools to start with. 

Fully customizable and user-friendly, this template enables you to design a staffing plan with your team in real-time and effectively manage both day-to-day operations and specific project-based operations. 

Similar to workforce planning software , this template helps you:

• Visualize the current staffing levels for each department in your company and the availability of your employees for different projects
• Get an overview of the skill sets and resources your employees bring to the table
• Assign tasks to employees based on their skills and meet current staffing needs
• Track important staffing metrics, job postings, and new hires
• Carry out staffing needs gap analysis and identify potential staffing gaps
• Plan for future human resource requirements

As a valuable tool, this template lets you stay on top of your staffing needs and streamline your staffing processes, helping you get things done quickly and move projects along in time. 

Ideal for: Visualizing and planning current and future staffing requirements for day-to-day tasks and specific project-based operations 

Optimize capacity planning for your project-based operations and make informed staffing decisions with ClickUp’s Staffing Matrix Template . 

Designed for beginners as well as experienced professionals, this template is easy to use and highly customizable. You can organize and save important information about your staff using a variety of custom attributes, including:

• Product description
• Annual compensation

This  capacity planning template  enables the human resource department to compare the role productivity against the annual compensation. It also helps you:

• Gain insight into staffing trends and needs
• Visualize information about your team members in one place
• Create custom roles and skill sets, ensuring the right people are assigned to the right role
• Define expectations for each role
• Allocate resources efficiently
• Minimize costs and maximize productivity

💡 Pro Tip: Understand staffing trends and needs at a glance with tools like ClickUp Dashboards . This tool organizes data using a variety of graphs and charts, helping you quickly identify key information about staffing requirements. 

You can operate this template in multiple views, such as List, Doc, and Grid, and effectively manage your staff, carry out complex projects, and build ideal customer journeys. 

Ideal for: Analyzing and optimizing staff capacity and productivity across various roles and departments in your company 

How can you make sure that your company hires the right candidates? This is where ClickUp’s Recruitment Strategy Document Template comes into play. 

This template helps you clarify the skills and experience you’re looking for. Once you are clear about the kind of candidates you want to hire, you can develop a standardized recruitment process. It then helps you figure out and document how you are going to screen applicants, conduct interviews, evaluate them, and make a job offer. 

This recruitment tool helps you:

• Outline and structure your recruitment strategies
• Plan each step of the recruitment process for different roles
• Carry out your recruitment process effectively
• Ensure job postings are clear and align with your company’s needs
• Compare and evaluate different candidates
• Find the best candidates from a large pool
• Track progress towards your recruitment goals

💡 Pro Tip: Focus more on tasks that require human perception and judgment and leave other repetitive tasks to ClickUp Brain . Input your desired prompts, and ClickUp Brain will craft customized, step-by-step recruitment plans and job descriptions that perfectly align with your company’s unique needs.

This template ultimately helps you execute recruitment strategies successfully, make informed hiring decisions, onboard talented individuals into your company, and take your entire company to new heights of success. 

Ideal for: Establishing and documenting a clear and structured approach to recruiting, enabling you to attract and select the best candidates

When your organization’s top leaders retire, how do you ensure that it continues to thrive? The solution involves succession planning and restructuring your workforce . 

Succession planning involves workforce management forecasting —identifying candidates with the knowledge, experience, potential, and desire and training them so that they can take over the top leadership roles when the time comes. 

Succession planning can be time-consuming and complex, so it’s best to use customizable frameworks like ClickUp’s Succession Planning Template , to ease your way through the process. 

This easy-to-use template helps you create a Team Members list with attributes such as:

• Name of employee
• Current job position
• Current department
• Current supervisor
• Succession readiness

It enables you to track and assess workforce analytics and determine the future leadership within your company. It also helps you:

• Plan for the development of potential successors
• Understand how roles and responsibilities will shift in the future
• Ensure continuity of business operations
• Build a pipeline of leadership talent

This template helps you ensure a smooth transition when key personnel move on and aids in the long-term success of your organization. 

Ideal for: Developing a strategic plan to identify and prepare future leaders and ensure continuity in key positions

Streamline your talent acquisition process with ClickUp’s Recruiting and Hiring Template , a comprehensive toolkit designed to enhance your recruitment workflow. This template centralizes and organizes every aspect of hiring.

Use this template to:

• Define job roles, responsibilities, and qualifications to attract suitable candidates
• Create standardized application forms to collect consistent candidate data
• Organize and store applicant information in a centralized database for easy access and tracking
• Schedule and coordinate interviews using a calendar or scheduling tool
• Send automated reminders to keep candidates and interviewers informed
• Utilize built-in interview scorecards to assess candidate performance objectively
• Track candidate progress through the hiring process using Custom Statuses and Custom Fields
• Collect and analyze your team’s feedback to inform hiring decisions collaboratively
• Make data-driven hiring decisions based on candidate qualifications, interviews, and team input
• Implement a personalized onboarding checklist to ensure a smooth transition for new hires

This template standardizes, organizes, and efficiently streamlines the recruitment and hiring processes. It reduces bias, enhances transparency, and helps you achieve your staffing-related HR goals more effectively.

Ideal for: Streamlining the end-to-end hiring process, from job postings to onboarding, for a more standardized, organized, and efficient recruitment experience

It’s no secret that companies with creative and organized recruitment plans attract the best talent. To ensure every step in the intricate recruitment process is covered, ClickUp’s Recruitment Action Plan Template is the way to go. 

From the initial application review to sending offer letters, this easy-to-use template enables you to plan for all the essential steps with the help of a customizable checklist. This checklist includes the following steps:

• Cover letter/resume review to ensure skills alignment
• Email confirmation of application received
• First interview
• Internal sync with recruiter/hiring manager
• Second interview
• Final candidate internal review
• Prepare/send an offer letter (if applicable)
• Prepare/send rejection letter (if applicable)

You can check off, modify, or add steps to this checklist. Moreover, you can attach documents, create tasks and subtasks, and assign team members for specific steps in this checklist. 

Ultimately, this checklist-like template helps ensure that your recruiting teams and hiring managers are on the same page about the recruitment process. It also enables them to provide a great recruitment experience and bring the best candidates on board. 

Ideal for: Managing each step of the recruitment process with a clear checklist, ensuring nothing is overlooked from initial application to final decision

Whether you want to build a team from scratch or add new members, ClickUp’s Hiring Selection Matrix Template will help you easily navigate the path forward. 

As one of the top free templates for HR teams, it helps your HR team create a standardized and fair process of screening, evaluating, and shortlisting candidates. It also enables your team to:

• Organize and group job applications by statuses like screening, HR interview, skills test, final interview, and job offer
• Visualize and store vital information about applicants using custom attributes like communication skills, CV, contact number, role, hiring stage, etc.
• Track each applicant’s progress, with statuses such as New, In Progress, Not a Fit, Complete, etc.
• Evaluate resumes and other applicant data with the help of criteria such as qualifications, skills, experience, etc.
• Identify the best candidates for the job based on objective data

💡 Pro Tip: Automate status changes with ClickUp Automations . Set rules, trigger actions, and streamline your workflow.

To make the selection process more efficient, this template provides your team with four different views:

• Interview Schedules view: Plan suitable times and days for conducting interviews and assign interviewing tasks to team members
• Call Assignments view: Assign team members to make calls and ensure every candidate gets a fair chance
• Candidate Database view: Store relevant data about all the candidates in a centralized location
• Getting Started Guide view: Review instructions and keep track of every single step needed to hire the most qualified candidate

This template improves the speed and accuracy of the hiring process and enables you to bring in the right candidates for your company. 

Ideal for: Screening, evaluating, and shortlisting candidates fairly with an organized, objective system to facilitate better hiring decisions 

When you need to understand the staffing needs for IT projects, you can use the Excel IT Project Staffing Plan Template by TemplateLAB. 

This template is easy to use and includes customizable sections to help you understand and list out the kind of personnel required. These customizable sections are:

• Project responsibility
• Skills required
• Number of staff required
• Estimated start date
• Duration required

Once you have filled these sections, this template provides another set of customizable fields to help you plan and meet the staffing requirements for different IT projects. These customizable fields include:

• Designated role
• Requested FTE (full-time equivalent)
• Acquired FTE
• Rate unit (cost/hour)

This template ultimately helps you ensure that you have the right talent to meet IT project needs. 

Ideal for: Planning and managing staffing needs specifically for IT projects, ensuring the right personnel are allocated to the right roles 

The Word Restaurant Staffing Plan Template by TemplateLAB is an effective tool for restaurant owners and managers. It enables them to plan and manage their staffing needs for day-to-day operations. 

This template includes customizable sections for listing: 

• Day, date, and working hours
• Customer experience tasks
• Employee management tasks
• Financial management tasks

This template helps restaurant managers ensure adequate staffing for each shift and smooth operations. It also enables them to track employee performance, maintain service quality, and manage finances more efficiently. 

Ideal for: Managing day-to-day staffing schedules and roles in a restaurant setting to ensure smooth operations 

The Presentation Staffing Plan Template by VENNGAGE is a highly customizable template that helps the HR department plan and communicate its staffing strategy in a visually appealing manner. 

This template covers four sub-plans, namely the full-time core team plan, part-time specialists plan, flexible workforce plan, and internship programs plan. For each plan, HR managers can organize information under sections:

• Position/role
• Description
• Required skills
• Responsibilities
• Compensation

HR professionals can also customize the size and color of each plan and add pictures, icons, charts, and other graphics. Moreover, they can use AI tools meant for HR teams to edit and enhance the clarity and design of each plan. 

Essentially, HR teams in startups can use this template to plan and present their staffing strategies professionally and keep all the relevant stakeholders informed. 

Ideal for: Creating visually engaging and professional staffing plans that effectively communicate your HR strategies 

Staffing plans are essential for HR teams to spot and fill gaps in skills, staffing, and resources. These tools help you quickly identify hiring needs and keep everything organized. But putting these plans together can be a real chore. That’s where one-stop productivity platforms like ClickUp come to the rescue with multiple free and easy-to-use staffing plan templates. 

By using these tools, you’ll save time and stay efficient, all while staying ahead of the competition. 

In addition to offering highly customizable, user-friendly templates that make staffing planning a breeze, ClickUp also provides many powerful tools for HR teams. From workforce management software to automation and AI tools, ClickUp streamlines the complex work of HR. 

Sign up with ClickUp and onboard the best talent for your company today! 

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