5 Microsoft Excel Charts for Creating Stunning Business Documents

Whether the goal of your business document is to attract investors, satisfy stockholders, or gain new customers, it's critical that they convey the precise message intended and look absolutely professional. Just about every business Excel user knows how to create basic line graphs and bar charts, but there are a wide variety of other graphing and charting tools better suited for many types of statistical data. This article will touch on 5 Excel charts covered in Excel training that can take your business documents to a new level of professionalism.

Excel Radar Chart

The Excel radar chart is a "big picture" chart that allows you to quickly show patterns when there are numerous factors. Oftentimes, when there is simply too much information to display, it's easy to miss the forest for the trees with other types of basic charts and graphs. Suppose your goal was to compare the ratings of 7 different television shows in 5 different markets over a course of 9 months. With so much data, the intended message could easily be lost with a series of bar charts. Excel training helps you to create radar charts that will quickly convey the message to your readers.

The Excel Bubble Graph

Another type of graph covered in Excel training to quickly compare numerous factors is the bubble graph. While the bubble graph has an x and y axis like a bar chart, the dimensions of the bubbles and their location on the plain also represents critical information. For example, think of an insurance company that sells policies in 10 states and each state has its own sales and revenue goals. The size of the bubble might represent the relative number of sales compared to projection while the bubble's location on the graph might represent how profitable the company is in the particular state.

The Excel Stock Chart

While stock brokers and analysts are familiar with creating stock charts, understanding how to create stock charts is important for anyone who produces business plans or letters to stock holders. As you'll learn in Excel training, the difference between a stock chart and a line graph is that a stock chart includes drop lines to portray the highs and lows of a stock between the open and close of a particular day. While readers can get the basic concept of a stock's trend with a line or bar graph, using the appropriate charts for your business documents shows professionalism.

The Donut Chart

If you've ever tried to compare several pie charts side by side, you know that it becomes an awkward way to attempt to represent data. A better way of comparing several similar elements each containing fractional categories is with a donut chart which is covered in Excel training. A donut chart displays only a ring of the pie, so that you can truly see how the pieces of one top-level element compare with another.

The Surface or Contour Chart

Surface charts are 3D charts and are also covered in Excel training. The surface chart shows how one variable is affected by two other variables, for example how altitude changes with longitude and latitude. Through Excel training, you'll learn how to harness large amounts of data with a surface chart and make a dramatic visual impression on the readers of your business document.

Charts make the meaning of lengthy rows of data crystal clear because it is simpler for most people to grasp information visually. This is precisely the reason that classroom-based Excel training surpasses self-study book or computer based training. Through the real-time examples shown in Excel training, learning how to create impressive charts for your business documents is simple.