When you want to display data that contains multiple separated series in a chart, it can often look clumsy. It is possible to tolerate presentation of three or four series, but anything more than that is a nightmare for those who watch the reports and need to draw a certain conclusion. The solution is to display several smaller, separate charts instead of one. This type of data presentation is called small multiples, and here’s how to achieve it in Excel reports.
Power BI Desktop, in its December edition, brought several new options for formatting Column and Bar visualizations, which we can use to make them much more functional and beautiful. In addition to this option, this “recipe” will show some new features that have been added to the data labels option. Relax and enjoy, here are some interesting contents…
A large number of Excel charts also have their 3D version. Although in most cases this is just unnecessary embellishment, making it difficult to draw conclusions, sometimes 3D charts really do make sense. In the text that follows, you will find out how to make this type of chart, as well as how you can change the perspective of looking at the data…
Report parameters are a new Power BI Desktop feature that allows you to create dynamic slicers with which you can influence the appearance of the report. In the previous “recipe”, you could see how it looks when we create field parameters, and now you will find out how to make those that contain numerical values. We will create a parameter that describes the sales target, then we will change it and see how it affects the chart…
“Actually an ordinary story, like Cinderella”… these are the words of an old hit from the ’80s, and they came to my mind as an illustration of what I want to describe in this text: a comparison chart of budgeted vs actual. If we use the display of data on the secondary axis, we can easily compare planned and realized values, which can be important for displaying intuitive reports.