Excel 2016 Bible

Chapter 22Creating Sparkline Graphics

IN THIS CHAPTER

1. Introducing the Sparkline graphics feature
2. Adding Sparklines to a worksheet
3. Customizing Sparklines
4. Making a Sparkline display only the most recent data

A Sparkline is a small chart that's displayed in a single cell. A Sparkline allows you to quickly spot time-based trends or variations in data. Because they're so compact, Sparklines are almost always used in a group.

Although Sparklines look like miniature charts (and can sometimes take the place of a chart), this feature is completely separate from the charting feature. For example, charts are placed on a worksheet's draw layer, and a single chart can display several series of data. A Sparkline is displayed inside a cell and displays only one series of data.

See Chapter 19, “Getting Started Making Charts,” and Chapter 20, “Learning Advanced Charting,” for information about real charts.

This chapter introduces Sparklines and presents examples that demonstrate how to use them in your worksheets.

Note

Sparklines were introduced in Excel 2010. If you create a workbook that uses Sparklines and that workbook is opened using Excel 2007 or earlier, the Sparkline cells will be empty.

All examples in this chapter are available on this book's website at www.wiley.com/go/excel2016bible ...