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Excel Dashboards

Dashboard thinking

Who the dashboard is for
Choosing the questions and KPIs
Sketching before you build
One page or many
The anatomy of a good dashboard

Data foundations

Tidy data for dashboards
Tables and named ranges
Calculation sheets
PivotTables as the engine
Refreshing without breaking anything

Layout and grid

Setting up the canvas
Grids, alignment and spacing
Visual hierarchy
Titles, headers and labels
Designing for screen, print and phone

Colour and typography

Building a palette
Colour that means something
Fonts and number formats
Contrast and accessibility
Themes and reusable styles

KPI cards and scorecards

Building a KPI card
Targets and variance
Sparklines
Icons and conditional formats
Scorecards and traffic lights

Chart design

Choosing the right chart for the question
Cleaning up a default chart
Combo and dual axis charts
Annotating the story
Maps, funnels and other visuals

Interactivity

Slicers
Timelines
Dropdown filters and linked controls
Dynamic titles and drill downs
Buttons and navigation

Finishing and projects

Protecting and publishing
Sharing and refreshing
Project: a sales dashboard
Project: a finance dashboard
Project: an operations dashboard

D-3-1 · Layout and grid

8 min

Setting up the canvas

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