Has this ever happened to you? You’re reading a perfectly good article with cogent points that seemingly address all of the necessary aspects of the argument and then… WHAM! You get smacked in the face and feel your innards crumple like the overzealous party guest who ran face-first into the screen door while eagerly attempting to get the host’s attention.
There, before your very eyes, supporting the argument to which you were accordingly nodding your head just moments ago, lies a visualization using the presets of an Excel Chart. That superfluous gradient fill, the bleeding of axis lines and tick marks… isn’t Calibri Greek for “the total loss of bowel control?”… and did they really try to make that off-color green the same hue as baby vomit?
Fear not, for in this snippet, I provide you “One, Single Step to Make Your Excel Graph Not Suck,” to which you can simply paste in the comment section of article you were just reading. Or, if you happen to be one of the creators of the aforementioned web content, follow this simple step and ensure the viewer finds value in your viz.
The Program & The Data
I used MS Excel for Mac 2011, although you’ll have the same capabilities as what I’ve presented here if you have MS Office for PC 2007 or later.
Here’s the Table of Data I used:
To make one of the hideous charts I’ve referenced above (in this case a bar chart), just select all of the data, and go to Charts > Column > Clustered Column as seen below
That will produce a chart like the one below… and make you nauseous
Step 1… The Only Step: Kill the Fill
- Select the chart and go to
Home > Themeson the Nav Ribbon and choose something… anything other than baby-vomit green. In the viz below, I chose “Civic”.
- Next, with the chart selected go to
Charts > Chart Styleand select the exact option I’ve highlighted in the illustration below… yes, every time.
With those two small changes alone, here is the majesty you have born from such rags:
As always comments, questions, and concerns and are considered compliments (by me).