So your boss comes across this chart from
McKinsey, and they want it in your next report. Do you believe me when I tell you that you
can use an Excel function to create it, and you can do it in under 90 seconds? Don't believe me?
Let's time it. Wait, before we start the timer, let me just quickly introduce you to the way our
data is set up in Excel. So we're dealing with the same numbers as the ones we saw from the McKinsey
report, except the context is different. We need to visualize the reasons our IT staff decides to
stick around. These are ranked starting from the top reason, which isn't surprising, all the
way to the least voted-for reason. Over here, I'm going to create our chart. Ready? Start the timer. First things first, let's just take a sip of coffee. Now I'm ready. First thing I'm going
to do is bring over the labels that I need for the chart. I'm just going to reference the cell, drag this down,
autofit. Here for the bars, I'm going to use the REPT function. This is the Repeat function in Excel. In
quotation, the text that I want to repeat is this symbol. So I'm just bringing up the Windows Emoji
picker, going to symbol, select the symbol, I want to repeat it this many times, close the bracket, ampersand. We're going to connect it with another symbol,
let's bring up the Windows Emoji picker again, go and select this circle, and before I add a quotation, I'm going to add a space, quotation and number, Enter Send this down. That's it, pretty much done, right? But we want to make this look
even better, so let's press Ctrl + 1 to add a border to this. I'm going to go with this light gray, down
here in the middle. Okay, we want to highlight the first five in a light gray background color. I'll
go with this one. These ones are going to be bold, Ctrl + B. Let's bring over the title as well and
Ctrl + B. Stop the timer. Pretty cool, right? You don't need a super-duper expensive software, just
90 seconds in Excel, a good coffee, it's all you need. Now, this obviously is dynamic, right? So if
our value here changes to 14, our chart is going to respond automatically. Okay, so I'm going to
Ctrl + Z this. Now, before you go implementing this in your files, there are some things that I want
you to be aware of and some neat variations of this. So, first of all, the REPT function returns
a value. That value is text. Just like any text, you can adjust the font color of the text, and
this way, you can get different colored bars, right? So here, I have green bars, blue bars. You
can also adjust the size of the bars. So if you don't have a lot of space in your report, you want
these bars to be shorter, just make the font size smaller, right? So you can see my bars are getting
shorter. I'm just going to put them back to 10. Another way you can tweak the style of your bars
is by adjusting the font type. So I'm using Arial, but take a look at this. When I hover over these
other fonts, my bars change. So you can create so many different variations just by changing the
font type. This means that because the font type and the font size are going to change the bar, all
the cells which carry your bars need to have the same font size and the same font type, so be aware
of that. Now, let me just show you some other variations of this. So, I used the dash symbol
here. You can use any symbol of your choice. You can get creative, you can use emojis, whatever you
want. It can be just as simple as using a dot. I'm just going to remove this symbol here, I'll leave
the space, and when I press Enter, you get this type of chart. You can also use cell references
for your symbol, right? So if you don't want to type it in inside quotation, just put it somewhere
on your Excel sheet and then just reference it. So, for example, here I have the star symbol. I'm
going to reference it. To be able to copy it down, I would have to fix it, but just to show you
how it looks, you can get a star chart. Now, this might not be so McKinsey-style, so let's use
another symbol. Here, I have this box. I'm going to fix the formatting, use the F4 key, press Ctrl
+ Enter, and let's just copy this down and fill with that formatting. Okay, so now you're going to
get a bar chart but inside your cells. Now, we can also change the color of these bars by changing
the font color. So let's say I want them in light gray, and these are a bit too bulky, so let's
adjust the font size. You can also use conditional formatting and change the color of the bars based
on a logic, right? Based on a condition. There are so many ways you can get creative here. So,
for example, if you have large numbers, so here we have sales values for these different days,
these are large, right? I don't want my symbol to be repeated 6,600 times. I can scale these. I can
use a function, a formula to scale these. I can also decide on the size of the largest bar. So,
for example, if I see, hmm, 40 is a bit too big for my report, I don't have that much space. I'm going to
change the size of the largest bar to be 30, and the whole chart is going to respond automatically.
I can adjust the symbol directly from here because these are formulas that are connected to these.
Now, another cool way you can modify this is to add comments inside your charts. So, for example,
let's say we want to add a comment here that there was an announcement that went out. Now, keep an
eye on this bar here. When I press Enter, that announcement is added automatically. So let's say
this is a VIP campaign. Keep an eye on the bar, press Enter, and that's added in here. You can
also add conditional formatting to this as well. Pretty cool. This technique works well if you have
integer values. If you're dealing with decimals, the REPT function just ignores the decimal, so
what you want to do is to round your values. But if you're dealing with small numbers and decimals
really matter, then you want to use an official Excel chart instead of using the technique that
we covered before. You can find all of these techniques and a lot more in our new course,
Business Charts in Excel. So, before I started recording this video, we added the final touches
to our course, and I really want to show you how it looks like from the inside. But before I do that, let
me give you a quick overview to see if it's of any interest for you. When we talk to our customers,
we realized that one of their struggles is to make high-quality, professional-looking Excel reports
and dashboards. This meant adding visuals to these reports that really get noticed. So not like
the default chart layouts we get in Excel, but ones that look like they just popped out of
The Economist magazine or the McKinsey website, because these types of charts grab attention. Now,
that's one side of the struggle. The other side is that they want to have the ability to create these
professional-looking reports really fast because pace matters in the business world. But the
problem is that Excel keeps getting new updates, it keeps changing, keeps getting new features,
and it's not clear what's the most efficient method to use to create these dynamic charts.
I've been there myself. I've faced the same Excel challenges that you're probably facing in
my corporate jobs when I was in finance, in IT, and in project management. Now, at this point in
my life, I'm honored to be a Microsoft MVP six times in a row. I'm also honored to have taught
over 400,000 individuals who've gone through our courses. We understand the struggles. I believe
it should be easy to create professional-looking charts. It shouldn't be time-consuming. You
shouldn't need to tweak your chart every single month. The whole process should be dynamic. That's
what you're going to learn in the course. We want you to be able to save a ton of time, and we want
you to stand out for your skills. Now, a lot of these charts that we cover in the course aren't
just impressive, they fit well in any corporate report, but they're also very rewarding to
make. It's fun to plug in your data and just see everything update like magic. Okay, let me quickly
show you the inside. Aside from over 8 hours of video lessons, you're going to get all the files
to follow along and all the ready-made templates. You have lifetime access to the course, so you
don't have to rush your learning. And I have to say though, that even though it's called Business
Charts in Excel, you're going to be learning a lot of really cool Excel formula combinations that
you can use elsewhere in your reports as well. We tried to cover all the scenarios that you
might be struggling with and give you solutions for these. For example, let's say you need to
create a visual, but you're not exactly sure where to start. You can go to "How to Pick the Right
Chart" lecture. So, aside from the video tutorial, you'll have access to a quiz. This is actually
a guide that's going to help you pick the right visual. You also get access to cheat sheets and
a quick guide eBook so you can recreate any of these charts really fast. You'll get CPD credits,
a digital badge that you can post on LinkedIn, and access to our super-friendly teaching
assistants to guide you if you get stuck. So, if you work at a corporate job and you'd like
to create professional-looking Excel charts and reports, join us in the course. We'd be honored
to have you. You're going to find the link in the description of this video. Click the link,
get access, and join us. I hope you don't mind this promotional bit in the video. I just had
to share the news because I know a lot of people struggle creating visuals and charts in Excel,
but it can be easy. Thank you for stopping by and watching all the way to the end. If you work
in IT or if you have a friend that works in IT, let me know why you or they are sticking around.
Is it the gadget thing? Is it the comfort thing? Which reasons from my dataset resonate?
Share that with us in the comments below. Thank you for watching. Thank you for being
here, and I'll catch you in the next video.
