Experiments with Excel Sparklines

After doing a quick tour of the new layout in the Excel 2010 Technical Preview, the first thing I wanted to look at more closely was the new Sparklines micro-charting feature that has been added.

 

Not bothering to be detained by any of the help or training materials, I selected a block of sample data, clicked the Insert tab, selected a line-based micro chart option from the Sparklines button and then scrolled down the adjacent column to define where the lines should appear.

 

Within a second or two, a set of in-cell graphical indicators appeared alongside each row of the relevant data. In place of the lines option, I could also have chosen Columns or Win/Loss formats from the Sparklines drop-down menu.

 

A table of figures needs to be carefully interpreted to extract meaning - once you represent the numbers as bar charts or trendlines, their meaning becomes so much clearer.

 

However my early experiments with a sample of Fantasy Football data bumped into a couple of frustrations. The measurement trend I wanted to show was best displayed by Sparklines, but it soon became evident they were based on a relative scale that blurred rather than clarified the players’ relative performances. The axis characteristics needed to be tweaked in a separate Design tab on the menu ribbon.