…and you’ve seen heat tables…

…but have you tried tables with bubbles?!

There are obviously pros and cons of each approach – like everything with data visualization.

Comment below with your own insights into the pros and cons.

How to Make Tables with Bubbles in Excel

You’ll set up a Helper Table with x, y, and z values.

Then, you’ll insert a bubble chart.

Finally, you’ll adjust the axes, grid lines, colors, and labels, just like you normally would.

Let me know if you’d like a more detailed tutorial.

Download the Excel File

Or, you can download my Excel file and explore it yourself.

This is just the file I used for this blog post (not step-by-step instructions).

Transcript

[00:00:00] I wanna show you a really fun way to use maps.

And, as usual, you can do this inside everyday software like Excel and PowerPoint and Word.

So a few hours ago I was on a client call and I looked at their before version of a table and it looked like:

this.

It was just a black and white table, and they were like, “Ann, we wanna keep it as a table, but it can’t be so boring. We don’t want it to put people to sleep.”

Now these are obviously nobody’s real numbers. These are obviously nobody’s real hospital names, but the table did look like this with one column per location.

And the locations in real life were in different countries around the world.

So here is the idea that I shared with the client, and I wanna share with you too:

adding maps as icons above each column of the table.

In their real slide deck, and their real report, They had many, many tables like this, comparing the hospitals and showing all the data.

So you could [00:01:00] obviously repeat the little country icons, the little country silhouettes over and over and over throughout the slide deck and throughout the report for nice consistency.

Now you could use them in dark brand colors. This is Ann Emery’s brand purple that you probably recognize.

And try playing around with it. You know, adjust the colors ever so slightly. You can also try lighter versions of your brand colors and you can also try gray. Okay.

Now, this isn’t the only way to visualize this table, but it is the fastest.

This whole thing took me maybe 10 minutes max to make from start to finish.

I just made it in Excel and then I pasted it into PowerPoint.

As usual, If you have any how to questions, comment down below, and I will certainly point you in the right direction.

In this tutorial, you’ll see a few ideas for transforming tables with check marks.

These tiny tweaks can be accomplished in everyday software like Excel.

What’s Inside

• 0:00 Intro
• 0:18 The “before” version
• 1:05 Decluttered
• 1:38 Left-aligned text for speed-reading
• 1:57 X’s into checks with built-in checkmarks
• 3:05 Filled vs. empty squares (with Webdings g and c)
• 4:48 Dark vs. light circles (with Webdings n)
• 5:47 Showing totals with tallies at the bottom
• 6:10 Showing totals with tallies at the right with countif, concatenation, and rept
• 6:48 Bars or stacked bars
• 6:59 The before-after transformation

Related Resources

How to Add Checkboxes to Excel

Download the Spreadsheet

It’s here.

Technical tables have so much value, especially as visual appendices for reports.

In this blog post, you’ll get ideas for bringing your technical tables to life.

Before

Here’s what the “before” version of some technical tables looked like.

These are made-up numbers, but you get the idea.

The public health staff wanted to look at quarterly numbers, the total annual number, and the rate (the number of cases per 100,000 live births).

Even if you’re not measuring neonatal abstinence syndrome, I bet there are numbers that you track each quarter. You might even want to look at the total annual number, too. Get some inspiration from this blog post, and then adapt the ideas to your own workplace.

Re-Created in Excel

First, I re-made their table in good ol’ Excel.

The finished product will be a PDF, but the most efficient way to bring technical tables to life is to keep the numbers inside Excel the entire time. We’re not going to transfer anything to Word.

Declutter

Let’s tackle the easy edits, such as:

• removing all the borders;
• adding back just the gray horizontal borders;
• removing the background fill; and
• left-aligning the text and right-aligning the numbers.

Add Trendlines

We’ll bring the quarterly trends to life with sparklines.

Add Bars

We’ll bring the annual totals to life with data bars:

We’ll bring the rates to life with data bars, too:

Brand Colors & Brand Fonts

Time to format!

We’ll apply brand colors and brand fonts:

We’ll color-code the text to match the bars.

(Sometimes the table’s columns get so narrow that it’s tricky to tell which number corresponds to which bar. That’s where color-coding comes to the rescue.)

As a general rule of thumb, colored font should be bold so that it passes 508/ADA color contrast guidelines.

Text Hierarchy & Intro Sentences

A text hierarchy means the title should be largest, boldest, and darkest so that it’s easiest to spot. (Followed by H1s and H2s if we had them.) We’re developing a hierarchy of information so our readers can stay organized.

As a general rule of thumb, I make sure headings are twice as big as body font. The body font is size 11, so this title is size 22 and bold.

We’ll also add intro sentences, and move that footnote info about the asterisks to the top. (People need to read that sentence before the table, not after.)

PDF- and Printer-Friendly

We’ve kept everything in Excel — that’s the only way to add the spark lines and data bars, and pasting tables into Word is a waste of time — but the final version will be shared with others as a PDF.

In the real version of this project, the PDF was about 15 pages long. There were various tabulations on various topics, not just neonatal abstinence syndrome.

We’ll need to:

• set the Print Area;
• adjust the Page Layout (portrait to landscape for easier on-screen reading);
• adjust the margins (0.5 to 1 inches is sufficient);
• add contact info and a logo so people can get in touch with questions; and
• adjust the column widths and row heights so everything fits juuust right.

Optional: Sort by Rates, Not Alphabetically

Finally, we might choose to sort the table by the most important column (rates, in this example) instead of alphabetically by county name.

I’m usually a fan of sorting. But I’m on the fence here. I also see the value in the leaving the counties alphabetized so readers can search for their own county. Hmm.

The Final Version

The visuals help us spot the patterns (thanks, Picture Superiority Effect).

The branding will help us look more professional to outside audiences (so we don’t look Frankensteined — when all our colleagues use different colors and fonts, and we put everything together in one doc, and it’s a hot mess).

The PDF’d appendices can be merged with the PDF’d report (thanks, Adobe Acrobat).

The Before-After Transformation

Once you’ve got intermediate/advanced Excel vizardry skills, the whole process will take less than an hour.

Really, this should take you less than 15 minutes!

If not, you’ll simply need to brush up on your Excel skills.

Dataviz is supposed to be fast and easy.

Bonus: Download the Materials

Want to explore my spreadsheet? Download my Excel file and adapt it for your own project.

These aren’t her real categories or real numbers, but you get the idea.

Before: Reading Numbers

Her “before” version looked something like this:

She had small n’s — a unique situation!

My definition of a “small” number is less than 100 — an arbitrary cut-off point that I learned from a past supervisor, and I’ve stuck with for years.

Not only was the total under 100, but each of the cells was under 100, too.

After: Skimming Visuals

There are several ways to bring the table to life.

During a 1:1 consultation, we talked through a few ideas together.

Idea 1: Heat Table

This easy visual — made via Excel’s Conditional Formatting — would be a great addition to the appendix.

If you’re familiar with the 30-3-1 approach to reporting, then you know I put allllll the tables in the appendix.

In other words, I aim for zero or few tables within the body of the report. The report’s body should focus on key findings with graphs, not dilute the data with eeeeeeverything in a table.

Idea 2: Clustered Columns

This is Ann K. Emery’s least favorite chart of all time. I’ll never let any of my students use one of these bad graphs!!!!

It’s the default option — we simply highlight the summary table in Excel, and insert a chart — and we get this lazy chart.

There’s too much going on, so it doesn’t tell us anything.

The color-coding by category is off.

There’s a separate legend, which is an accessibility no-no.

Idea 3: Small Multiples Histograms

With a re-orientation and re-coloring, it’s easy to build small multiples histograms.

But, the vertical columns didn’t fit her portrait Word doc:

The horizontal bars would be totally fine.

My only hesitation was that bar charts are… boring.

I’ll never let my students have only bar charts in their reports, slides, dashboards, or infographics. Our viewers deserve variety.

Plus, this was a unique small n situation. Let’s capitalize on that!

Idea 4: Icon Arrays

To bring the small n to life, we tried an icon array.

The student liked this option because:

• It’s very, very, very fast to create — much faster than creating and formatting a chart.
• It was similar to her original table — the same rows and columns.
• Right away, she could see how much bigger Category A was than the other categories.

Yes, I realize the irony…

I just wrote a blog post asking you to humanize your data with realistic people icons, which would be a step above shapes like circles and squares.

We tried realistic people icons, too.

They look fine close-up.

But they simply didn’t fit. In other words, there would have to be fewer icons, and/or they’d have to be much larger, to even be legible.

They just look like chicken scratch, sigh.

Behind the Scenes

I’ve written and spoken about symbol fonts a million times.

Webdings, StateFace, and WeePeople are personal favorites.

Yep, these are simply Webdings n’s!

Never, ever add a bajillion individual circles to your Word doc or PowerPoint slide. What a waste of our own time. Just use symbol fonts.

Made Within Minutes

Can you type n’s into your table?

And change the font into Webdings?

Even if you’re the slowest typer in the world… I promise it won’t take long to type some n’s.

Then, simply adjust the font colors, so that you’re using one brand color per category.

Bonus: Download the Materials

Want to see the Excel file and Word doc used in the blog post? Download them here.

Here’s one of my favorite table decluttering tips: Change the black zeros into gray dashes—with formulas and conditional formatting.

Before: Zeros in Black

Does your table have lots of zeros?

Sometimes my tables have huge values—numbers, percentages, or currency into the thousands, millions, or even billions.

Other times, my tables have small values—lots of single digit and double digit numbers, and even some zeros, like this one.

I recently worked on a dashboard project with a foundation where our n was just 11 grantees. It was the smallest n I’d worked with in a while!

This table is fictional, but you get the idea.

Here’s the old way to show zeros: In black text.

After: Manually Adding Dashes with the Single Quote “Finger Wag”

Let’s replace the 0s with dashes.

In Excel, here’s how:

• If you type a dash, Excel will get confused. Excel thinks we’re creating a subtraction formula.
• Instead, start with a single quote, a.k.a. the Finger Wag. We’re scolding Excel. The single quote means, “Don’t change my format! Leave whatever I type after the single quote alone! This isn’t supposed to be a subtraction formula! It’s just a dash!”

The finished product would look like this (below).

Now, we can actually see the zeros better!

It’s easier to see that Grantee H had an entire row of zeros. Variables D and E also had more zeros than the other variables.

After: Manually Making the Dashes Light Gray

Let’s keep going.

I usually make the dashes gray (so they disappear even more).

You can simply change the font color.

After: Automatically Adding Dashes with an IF Statement

But what if your tables values come from another source? (So there are formulas living behind the scenes?) In that case, we can’t simply type a dash by hand. It would remove the formula.

In this example, I’m pretending we’ve got a separate dataset on its own sheet.

The table is a sum of all those entries.

My tables often have sumifs, countifs, xlookups, and more living behind the scenes, like this:

We can adjust our existing formulas just a tad.

I add IF statements so that if my formula results in a zero, then it shows a dash:

After: Automatically Making Dashes Gray with Conditional Formatting

Finally, let’s add another time-saver.

Let’s use Conditional Formatting to automatically turn the dashes gray.

The fewer manual changes, the better!

Formulas and Conditional Formatting save our future selves a lot of time. If we add new entries to our dataset, then the formulas will automatically update.

Formulas and Conditional Formatting also reduce typos. We won’t accidentally forget about one of the zeros.

Here’s how:

1. Highlight the table.
2. Go to the Home tab.
3. Click on the Conditional Formatting button.
4. Choose Highlight Cells Rules.
5. Choose Text That Contains.
6. In the pop-up window, type a dash.
7. Instead of “Light Red Fill with Dark Red Text,” go to the bottom of the drop-down list, and choose Custom Format.
8. On the next pop-up window, change the font color to gray.

That sounds like a lot of steps, but it’s fast, I promise!

Once you get familiar with Conditional Formatting, it only takes this long:

Yes, You Can Transfer Formatted Tables from Excel into PowerPoint or Word

Here’s how you’ll transfer your table into Word:

1. In Excel, finish formatting the table. I added gray lines between the rows and I “hid” the grid lines from the cells (View tab –> uncheck the Gridlines box. Sure, you can adjust the borders later in Word, but table formatting is generally a pain in Word. I try to do 99.9% of the formatting in Excel.
2. In Excel, I highlighted and copied the table with good ol’ CTRL + C.
3. In Word, I went to Paste –> the down-arrow–> Keep Source Formatting.
4. Then, in Word, I re-sized the table to fit the page.

It looks like this:

Here’s how you’ll transfer your table into PowerPoint:

1. In Excel, finish formatting the table. I added gray lines between the rows; I “hid” the grid lines from the cells (View tab –> uncheck the Gridlines box); and I re-sized the columns (wider) and rows (taller). Sure, you can adjust these things in PowerPoint later… but it’s such a pain. I prefer formatting in Excel first, and then transferring to PowerPoint.
2. In Excel, I highlighted and copied the table with good ol’ CTRL + C.
3. In PowerPoint, I went to Paste –> the down-arrow –> Keep Source Formatting.
4. Then, in PowerPoint, increase the font size. I recommend 18+ for presentations.

Please don’t take screenshots from Excel and paste them into other programs. Your table will get blurry.

Please don’t transfer tables and graphs as images. They’ll get blurry.

Please don’t take screenshots from Excel and paste them into other programs. They’ll be blurry.

Please don’t transfer tables and graphs as images. They’ll be blurry.

Download the Spreadsheet

If you’re familiar with sumifs, if, and Conditional Formatting, then this will be fast and easy for you!

If you’re new to sumifs, if, and Conditional Formatting, then download my spreadsheet. You can click through the formulas yourself to see how everything is set up: https://depictdatastudio.gumroad.com/l/UseGrayDashesInsteadOfZeros