Trending data by day is common, but it does prove to be painful if the trending extends to 30 days or more. In these scenarios, it becomes difficult to keep the chart to a reasonable size and even more difficult to effectively label it. One solution is to show the trending vertically using a bar chart.

Place the key components of your dashboard in the upper-left or middle-left of the page.

Your audience has only a certain amount of time and resources to dedicate to solving any issues you can emphasize in your dashboard. Showing them the top and bottom values in your data can help them pinpoint where and how they can have the most impact with the time and resources they do have.

Studies show that users pay particular attention to the upper left and middle left of a document.

A histogram is essentially a graph that plots frequency distribution. A frequency distribution shows how often an event or category of data occurs. With a histogram, you can visually see the general distribution of a certain attribute.

Ideal colors for labels are soft grays, light browns, soft blues, and greens.

A dashboard should provide an at-a-glance view into key measures relevant to a particular objective or business process. This implies that all the data is immediately viewable at one time. Although this isn’t always the easiest thing to do, it’s best to see all the data on one page or screen.

Blue and Red are the only colors from the 8 VB colors that are viable in a report or dashboard. The rest of the colors listed are virtually unusable, as they are very unattractive. Fortunately, the Excel palette comes with 56 colors that you can call up using a color code. Every color has a code: The color code for black is 1, the color code for wh

When you create a chart, Excel attempts to determine whether your category axis contains date or time values. If so, it creates a time-series chart.