Using a spreadsheet program like Excel is a great way to allow you to have access to data. Much like the characters in “The Matrix” can read the Matrix’s digital rain, if you know how to read the data, you can visualize what the data in the spreadsheet represents. However, if you’re like me and you didn’t take the red pill, you probably prefer having a visual representation of that data. How do we do that in Excel? With infographics, of course! Here are some ways to visualize your Excel data with infographics.
If you haven’t already read the informative article that Guillermo wrote about InfoGraphics as the new social media trend, I must first recommend that you do. I won’t go into detail explaining what an infographic is, but instead, I will provide some very basic tips on how to add infographics to your Excel spreadsheet. You can find great examples of infographics for SEO on the link in Steve’s weekly recap for 5/24-5/28 listed as All Links are Not Created Equal: 10 Illustrations on Search Engines’ Valuation of Links.
Shapes
Perhaps the easiest way to create a graphical representation of information is to use your basic shapes. You can do this quite easily by going to the Insert Tab, selecting the “Shapes” drop down menu, and then selecting the shape of your choice in the menu below. You will notice that it is conveniently organized into several categories including: lines, rectangles, basic shapes, block arrows, equation shapes, flow chart, stars and banners and call outs. I could easily go into detail on just these shapes, but I’ll leave it to you to play around with the basic shapes on your own.
Just like the formatting of cells, you can format the shapes that you add to your spreadsheet. The various options include fill, line color, line style, shadow, 3-D format, and 3-D rotation, just to name a few. Don’t be afraid to play with the various fill options, such as gradient or picture/texture fill. On that note, you can only make changes to the picture formatting of the shape if you fill the shape with a picture. You can also link the value of a cell to the shape so that the shape displays that cell’s value.
You do this by selecting the shape that you’ve created, entering the “=” sign in the formula bar and selecting the cell that contains the value you wish to display. So, let’s say I create a 5-pointed star, and I have text in cell A1 that says “Best Rank Rocks!”. Once I make the star, I can either type “=$A$1” or type in the “=” and select the cell A1 and hit enter. If you need to make changes to the text, you can do basic font changes in the Home tab, and add more formatting to the text in the Format Tab within the WordArt Styles section.
SmartArt
One great feature of Excel 2007 that makes infographics creation so much easier is the use of something called SmartArt. You may have seen a button for it on the Insert Tab, right next to the “Shapes” button. If you are just looking for a quick and easy way to represent a list, process, cycle, hierarchy, relationship, matrix or pyramid of your data, this is a great tool for you. It allows the customization that the basic shapes offer, while making the process a bit simpler by providing an easy text pane that you use to enter the data to corresponding shapes on the SmartArt graphic.
When selecting the SmartArt button, you will be provided with many options of SmartArt graphics to choose from. Select whichever one you want, then Excel will create a “template” on your worksheet for you to customize. If the text pane isn’t already open (to allow you to input data), just find the SmartArt text pane by selecting the outward facing arrow button on the tab located on the left side of the SmartArt frame, or by right-clicking the SmartArt and selecting "Show Text Pane". You will see a bulleted list which will make organizing the information on your infographic a lot easier.
Some SmartArt graphics are “pre-made” to allow you to add pictures of your choice, and are represented by gray boxes with the universal Office icon for adding a picture. Double-click these graphic boxes and a new window will pop-up to allow you to select what picture to use. What a time saver! You can also change the shape of the picture if you wish to do so. However, there is a downside to using SmartArt: you cannot assign a cell’s value for the information in a SmartArt graphic like you can with the basic shapes mentioned above.
However, you can “cheat” by creating the overall structure of the graphic you want using a SmartArt graphic, selecting the all of the shapes in the SmartArt by selecting the SmartArt graphic’s background and hitting Ctrl+A (which selects all the shapes within the SmartArt), then hit Ctrl+C (which copies those shapes), select a cell outside of the SmartArt frame and hit Ctrl+V (which will paste the shapes as regular shapes). After you’ve done that, you can treat each shape just the same as a regular shape, which means you can assign values based on cell values (see the example above). This can save you precious time if you are trying to create quick and easy graphics to be used in multiple documents that need to be updated or changed on the fly.
Charts
Often referred to as graphs, the charts you can create in Excel 2007 come in a variety of styles. You can create anything from simple line graphs to elaborate spider/radar charts. You can easily transform your table of data into a chart by selecting your data, going to the Insert tab, selecting any of the chart types in the Charts section (or Other Charts for ones that aren’t listed), and selecting what type of chart you wish to add. You can also change the chart type in the Design Tab, with the button labeled “Change Chart Type” once you’ve already created your chart.
You can do so many things in the Design Tab, including changing the chart Style, Layout, as well as switching the row/column data. You can also make specific formatting changes when you right-click on various elements of your chart. You can format the chart area and plot area, as well as your data series and axis options. The customization options are plentiful, so don’t be afraid to experiment with the different options available.
With so many options available, you can make incredibly unique charts that not only get the message across, but can match a certain theme or color scheme. This is great if you want to match your company’s logo colors with your spreadsheets to give them a more personalized and identifiable look. If you’re planning on using Excel to produce charts for a presentation to clients, this can help enhance your corporate identity.
If you plan to create several spreadsheets with the same overall style, I recommend that you save your spreadsheet as a template, so that you can use the same styles repeatedly without having to recreate it every time. This is as easy as selecting the Office Button (that funky windows logo button on the top left) and selecting “Save As” , “Other Formats”, select the drop down menu next to “Save as type” (which should be Excel Workbook by default) and choose "Excel Template" and hit “Save”. You can, of course, choose to save it as an Excel 97-2003 Template in order to make it compatible with older versions of Excel, but you risk losing some of the fancy formatting and SmartArt that only 2007 and newer Office programs offer.
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