Figure 1153 You can add an arrow head to a series line.

The result: when the value for column E changes, the arrow keeps pointing to the top of the column.

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Figure 1154 The arrow automatically moves with the data point.

WHEN DO I USE WHICH CHART TYPE?

Problem: There are 80 chart types. When should I use which chart type?

Strategy: Here are several examples:

●● For time series with equal points, you can either use column or line. People expect time to move from left to right. Use column for 12 points or less, lines for 12 points or more.

●● For time series with unequal points or with hours, use scatter.

●● Don’t use pie charts over time. Instead, use a stacked 100% column chart.

Figure 1157 The size of the bubble indicates price.

Excel offers four types of stock charts. The name of the chart tells you the order in which the data columns should be arranged.

Figure 1159 Visit http://tinyurl.com/jonpeltier

TRACK SALES LEADS WITH A FUNNEL CHART

Problem: I need to track a sales pipeline. This is basically a bar chart, but the bars are centered.

Strategy: The February 2016 update of Office 365 includes a funnel chart.

Figure 1160 Funnel charts are new in Office 365.

CREATE TINY CHARTS WITH SPARKLINES

Problem: I need to create a chart for every row in my data set.

Strategy: Use a sparkline. Professor Edward Tufte introduced the concept of sparklines in his book Beau- tiful Evidence. Tufte described sparklines as intense word-sized charts. Microsoft implemented Tufte’s ideas in Excel 2010 with three types of tiny charts: line charts, column charts, and win/loss charts.

Creating sparklines is simple, although you might want to tweak the default sparklines. Below, there are

27 months of closing stock prices for 3 financial firms. Select the data that you want to plot in the spar- klines.

From the Insert tab, choose the Line sparkline.

Excel displays the Create Sparklines dialog. Because you pre-selected the data, you need to specify only the output range. Because the input range is 3 rows by 27 columns, the output range has to either be 3 cells or 27 cells. The size of the output range will determine whether you want 3 sparklines or 27 sparklines.

Gotcha: In the rare case where your input range is exactly square, Microsoft will turn each row into a sparkline. If you want each column to be a sparkline, use the Edit Data dropdown on the

Sparkline Tools Design tab and choose Switch Row/Column.

Figure 1161 Specify an output range.