Balanced Scorecards and Operational Dashboards with Microsoft Excel, 2nd Edition

Chapter 15

Text-Based Dashboards

This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.

—Sir Winston Churchill

Statesman

1874–1965

Knowing that Excel has one of the best graphical engines available in business software, why would you consider creating text-based dashboards? There are numerous reasons.

The text-based dashboards described in this chapter use text elements that fit within worksheet cells. They take up little room in a printed report yet give the reader a quick comparison between relative values. And text-based dashboards are compatible across earlier versions of Excel.

This chapter also describes conditional formatting used in Excel 2007 and Excel 2010 that can alert users with colors, icons, and bars. Chapter 19 describes how to insert miniature charts into cells in Excel 2007 and Excel 2010.

With the addition of conditional colors and conditional icons, we can create information-rich screens or printed reports that contain a great deal of data and also convey a great deal of information. The text-based dashboard techniques in this chapter enable you to do the following:

• Create information-rich printed reports to complement dynamic and chart-oriented dashboards.
• Match the information-rich format used in some Business Intelligence software.
• Create color alerts and icon alerts that draw attention to text data.
• Create report elements that make alerts more readable for those who are color-blind.
• Create text elements compatible with any version of ...