components – components that can be used for both dashboards and reports. It’s important to note that this book is not a guide to visualizations or dashboarding best practices – although those subjects are worthy of their own book. This book is focused on the technical aspects of using Excel’s various tools and functionality and applying them to reporting.
The chapters in this book are designed to be stand-alone chapters that you can selectively refer to as needed. As you move through this book, you’ll be able to create increasingly sophisticated dashboard and report components. After reading this book, you’ll be able to
✔ Analyze large amounts of data and report them in a meaningful way.
✔ Gain better visibility into data from different perspectives.
✔ Quickly slice data into various views on the fly.
✔ Automate redundant reporting and analyses.
✔ Create interactive reporting processes.
Foolish Assumptions
I make three assumptions about you as the reader. I assume that you
✔ Have already installed Microsoft Excel.
✔ Have some familiarity with the basic concepts of data analysis, such as working with tables, aggregating data, and performing calculations.
✔ Have a strong grasp of basic Excel concepts such as managing table structures, creating formulas, referencing cells, filtering, and sorting.
How This Book Is Organized
The chapters in this book are organized into six parts. Each of these parts includes chapters that build on the previous chapters’ instruction. The idea is that as you go through each part, you will be able to build dashboards of increasing complexity until you’re an Excel reporting guru.
Part I is all about helping you think about your data in terms of creating effective dashboards and reports. Chapter 1 introduces you to the topic of dashboards and reports, giving you some of the fundamentals and basic ground rules for creating effective dashboards and reports. Chapter 2 shows you a few concepts around data structure and layout. In this chapter, you will learn the impact of a poorly planned data set and will discover the best practices for setting up the source data for your dashboards and reports.
In Part II, you take an in-depth look at some of the basic dashboard components you can create using Excel. Chapter 3 starts you off with some fundamentals around designing effective data tables. Chapter 4 shows you how you can leverage the Sparkline functionality found in Excel. Chapter 5 provides a look at the various techniques that you can use to visualize data without the use of charts or graphs. Chapter 6 rounds out this section of the book by introducing you to pivot tables and discussing how a pivot table can play an integral role in Excel-based dashboards.
In Part III you go beyond the basics to take a look at some of the advanced chart components you can create with Excel. This part consists of three chapters, starting with Chapter 7, where I demonstrate how to represent time trending, seasonal trending, moving averages and other types of trending in dashboards. In Chapter 8, you explore the many methods used to bucket data – putting data into groups for reporting, in other words. Finally, Chapter 9 demonstrates some of charting techniques that can help you display and measure values versus goals.
Part IV focuses on techniques that can help you automate your reporting processes, and give your users an interactive user interface. Chapter 10 provides a clear understanding of how macros can be leveraged to supercharge and automate your reporting systems. Chapter 11 illustrates how you can provide your clients with a simple interface, allowing them to easily navigate through (and interact with) their reporting systems. Chapter 12 shows you how pivot slicers can add interactive filtering capabilities to your pivot reporting.
The theme in Part V is importing and exporting information to and from Excel. Chapter 13 explores some of the ways to incorporate data that does not originate in Excel. In this chapter, you find out how to import data from external sources as well as create systems that allow for dynamic refreshing of external data sources. Chapter 14 wraps up this book on Excel dashboards and reports by showing you the various ways to distribute and present your work.
Part VI is the classic Part of Tens section found in Dummies series titles. The chapters found here each present ten or more pearls of wisdom, delivered in bite sized pieces. In Chapter 15, I share with you ten or so chart-building best practices, helping you design more effective charts. Chapter 16 offers a run-down of the ten most commonly used chart types, along with advice on when to use each one.
Icons Used In This Book
As you read this book, you’ll see icons in the margins that indicate material of interest (or not, as the case may be). This section briefly describes each icon in this book.
Beyond the Book
A lot of extra content that you won’t find in this book is available at www.dummies.com. Go online to find the following:
✔ Excel files used in the examples in this book can be found at
www.dummies.com/extras/exceldashboardsreports
This book contains a lot of exercises in which you create and modify tables and Excel workbook files. If you want to follow the exercise but don’t have time to, say, create your own data table,