Keywords: Sparklines, MicroCharts, NanoCharts, In-cell graphing, mini charts, Excel
Version: Tested on Excel 2003
Download: NanoCharts demo (downloaded 1791 times)
Sparklines, or Micro charts, a concept invented by graphic design guru Edward Tufte , compress large amounts of data into intense, word-sized graphics, like for example:
The Sparkline approach can be a highly effective way to present data in budget reports or other types of executive summaries, since trends and relations are made visual in a very small space.
There are a couple of large developers offering commercial add-ins for excel to create Sparklines: Bissantz’s SparkMaker and Bonavista Systems’ MicroCharts. These are available as free trial downloads, full versions start from around $50.
I wanted to try to make a simple tech demo of the Sparklines concept in Excel and ended up writing a script that adds a Bar Chart Sparkline, or NanoChart as I decided to call them, to a column of data. You can see a screenshot of the demo below.
This is a demo with very limited functionality, but it’s free, and you can modify it to suit your needs. In the future I will develop the NanoCharts to make them more flexible and add more options, like allowing data in rows, customizeable chart type, color and scaling. Make sure to check back.
Download: NanoCharts demo (downloaded 1791 times)
Popularity: 11% [?]
hey guys,Sparkline chart’s are available on silverlight,thinking where to chk it out? here is the link visifire an amazing charting component powered by silverlight offered under open source.