Excel 2019 Bible

523

C H A P T E R

22

Creating Sparkline Graphics

IN THIS CHAPTER

Introducing the Sparkline graphics feature

Adding Sparklines to a worksheet

Customizing Sparklines

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 spot

time-based trends or variations quickly 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 work-

sheet’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 20, “Getting Started with Excel Charts,” and Chapter 21, “Advanced Charting Features,” for informa-

tion about real charts.

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

your worksheets.

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 http://www.wiley.com/go/excel2019bible.

The filename is sparkline examples.xlsx.

Sparkline Types

Excel supports three types of Sparklines. Figure 22.1 shows examples of each, displayed in column H.

Each Sparkline depicts the six data points to the left.

Excel® 2019 Bible, First Edition. Michael Alexander, Dick Kusleika and John Walkenbach.
© 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.