I often receive emails from readers asking about what software I use to create the visuals for my blog posts. Most people are shocked to hear that the majority of the static charts, graphs, and grids are created using Microsoft Excel. Because I have received so much positive feedback about the visuals, I decided to create a short guide for making charts in Excel.
Today I’m excited to share The Tiny Guide to Better Charts in Excel, a free PDF I created that provides tutorials on how to create the three most common visuals I use in my blog posts: line charts, area charts, and grids.
Specifically, the PDF gives step-by-step instructions for creating these three charts:
Line Chart
Area Chart
Grid
Whether you’re a blogger, someone who uses Excel in their day job, or an average Joe looking to improve their visualization skills, this tiny guide will provide you with a solid foundation for creating better charts in Excel.
Technical Note: I built the tutorials for these charts using Microsoft Excel 2013, so I can’t guarantee that the instructions will be compatible with other versions of Excel.
You can download the PDF along with the data for the tutorials by clicking on the links below 🙂
PDF: The Tiny Guide to Better Charts in Excel
Excel Templates: line_chart, area_chart, grid
Zach is the author behind Four Pillar Freedom, a blog that teaches you how to build wealth and gain freedom in life.
He quit his day job as a data scientist in 2019 because he was able to earn enough income from profitable websites to replace his salary. He now teaches people how to start and grow their own profitable websites from scratch in the Income Community.
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Thank you for sharing your tricks with us. Having never really used spreadsheets for school or work, I’ve had to teach myself to use the software.
I can usually do what I need with the math, but struggle to make pretty charts.
Cheers!
-PoF
No problem, I hope you find the guide useful 🙂
Thanks for your excellent “Tiny Guide”. Any suggestions on how to make the charts interactive on a blog/website?
Thanks
No problem Don! To make the interactive charts I use JavaScript, which is a bit more complex. I may create a Tiny Guide to JavaScript Charts some day though. Stay tuned.