When creating traditional tables, I follow the Dark Horse Analytics guide. When I’m presenting tables in a presentation, webinar, or full-color report, I create heat tables.

In heat tables, higher numbers get darker colors and lower numbers get lighter colors. Viewers find patterns in the data much faster than if they were reading line by line of text from the table.

Here’s how to make them in good ol’ Excel.

Step 1. Highlight the cells you want to color-code.

Ignore the categories on the left. Ignore the table headers along the top. Just select the actual numbers or percentages in the body of the table.

Step 2. Click on the Conditional Formatting button.

It’s hiding in plain sight on the Home tab.

Step 3. Select one of the Color Scales.

For sequential patterns, use a one-color scale (e.g., green faded into white). For diverging patterns, use a two-color scale (e.g., red versus blue).

Congratulations, you’re finished! Start exploring your data. Which patterns stand out now?

Bonus! Add white borders to differentiate cells from each other. 

White borders help with color printing and with black-and-white printing (so the cells don’t bleed into each other).

Bonus! Sort the data from greatest to least instead of alphabetically.

Or, from least to greatest, depending on which pattern you want to emphasize. Use the Sort feature or use Filters (Home –> Sort & Filter –> Filter).

Bonus! Adjust the print settings so your heat table can be printed or PDF’d.

Add a title; repeat the table headings at the top of each page; add a footer with the date and/or page numbers; and adjust the font type and font size. Once you learn to adjust print settings you’ll save hours of time and every printed or PDF’d spreadsheet will look more professional.

Bonus! Customize the color palette.

Highlight the cells again and return to Home –> Conditional Formatting –> Color Scales –> More Rules.

Select new colors to correspond with the lowest and highest values in your table. You might even match the RGB codes to your organization’s logo.

Have you tried this tutorial? Comment below and link to a screenshot of your own heat table! My newsletter subscribers get a copy of this dataset to explore on their own.

Want to learn practical visualization strategies and time-saving tips? Register for one of my upcoming workshops or webinars, like this hands-on workshop that I’m co-teaching with Stephanie Evergreen in Chicago in a couple weeks.

Congratulations to the 6 contestants! Click on the contestant’s name to see their chart.

• James Coyle
• Sara Vaca
• Elisa Avila
• Angie Ficek
• Amanda Drescher
• Bryan Stephany

Most of them even applied this chart type to their own datasets. Sara, Elisa, and Angie ended up using different types of bar charts altogether. Check ’em out!

Now it’s time to post the how-to guide.

Step 1: Study the chart that you’re trying to reproduce in Excel.

We’re trying to re-create a small multiples bar chart like the one shown below. We’re comparing how many small, medium, and large nonprofits reported using each evaluation technique.

Small multiples bar chart

Step 2: And the secret to making a small multiples bar chart in Excel…

…is that we’re going to make six separate clustered bar charts. When we copy and paste the charts from Excel into PowerPoint or Word, they’ll look like a single cohesive chart.

Six small charts come together to look like one big chart.

Step 3: Type the data into Excel.

Here’s one of several ways to align your data.

Step 4: Create the first bar chart.

We’re going to create six bar charts. I started with Internal Tracking Forms.

A default bar chart showing the percentage of small, medium, and large nonprofits that use internal tracking forms.

You know the drill: Add data labels inside the end of your bars. Delete the legend, title, tick marks, grid lines, and horizontal axis label. (Later, we’ll insert new text boxes to label everything.) Adjust the axis so it goes from 0 to 100% (rather than 0 to 70%). Change the bar color. Use gray text to de-emphasize less important information like the axis labels. Reduce the gap width from 150% to something closer to 30% or 50%.

Hot tip: Keep the borders. We’ll delete the borders at the very end. The borders help us keep all the charts and text boxes aligned and even.

After a few clicks, we’ve improved the general look and feel of our bar chart.

Beginner Excel users: If you need extra instruction, check out how to make a basic bar chart and my Excel for Evaluation chart tutorials.

Step 5: Copy the first chart.

Rather than re-create the wheel when making the second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth bar charts, let’s save some time by simply copying the first chart.

Just use good ol’ fashioned copying and pasting to create a second bar chart.

Step 6: Populate the second chart with the second chart’s data.

The first chart is for Internal Tracking Forms and the second chart can be for Interviews. Use the “select data” feature to put the Interview percentages into the chart.

To reduce cluttering, delete the second chart’s axis labels and use the business card trickto make sure each chart’s plot area is the same width and height.

Step 7: Make the third, fourth, fifth, and six bar charts.

Do some more copying and pasting to create the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth bar charts.

Step 8: Add text boxes to label everything and delete the borders.

Insert text boxes. Once everything is aligned, delete the borders.

Save time by copying and pasting text boxes, too. No need to create every single one from scratch!

Step 10: Paste the charts into PowerPoint or Word.

Since we’ve got 6 charts and 14 text boxes, copying and pasting into PowerPoint or Word can be a pain.

Hot tip: Carefully select all 6 charts and 14 text boxes. Right-click and “group” all the items together. Then, you can copy and paste into PowerPoint or Word with a single click!

Grouping the items together makes inserting your small multiples bar chart into Word or PowerPoint a breeze.

Bonus

Click here to download my Excel file.

Congratulations to the 9 contestants! Click on the contestant’s name to see their chart.

• Regan Grandy
• Sara Vaca
• Alex Kadis
• Katrina Brewsaugh
• @CaptainCane64
• @PD_ssp
• Will Fenn
• Angie Ficek (Check out how she used her own data!)
• James Coyle (Check out how he used his own pre-post data!)

Now it’s time to post the how-to guide.

Step 1: Study the chart that you’re trying to reproduce in Excel.

We’re trying to re-create a side by side bar chart like the one shown below. We’re comparing how Coalition A and Coalition B scored on Innovation Network’s Coalition Assessment Tool.

Step 2: And the secret to making side by side bar charts in Excel…

…is that we’re going to make two separate bar charts, one for Coalition A and one for Coalition B. When we copy and paste the charts from Excel into PowerPoint or Word, they’ll look like a single cohesive chart.

Step 3: Type the data into Excel.

Make sure you choose a purposeful order to your data, like the highest percentage on top and the lowest percentage on bottom.

Excel often flips the data table upside down when creating charts, i.e. if you want the overall scores to be at the bottom of the chart, then you need to put the overall scores in the top of your data table. (Or, you can reverse the order of the categories later on.)

Step 4: Create the first bar chart.

You know the drill: Add data labels inside the end of your bars. Choose a color palette that matches your client’s logo or your own logo. Use an action color to draw the reader’s eye where you want it (in my example, the overall score). Delete unnecessary ink like the tick marks, grid lines, and border. Use gray to de-emphasize things like (n=7) and the axis labels. Reduce the gap width.

Beginner Excel users: If you need extra instruction, check out how to make a basic bar chart and my Excel for Evaluation chart tutorials.

Step 5: Copy the first chart.

Rather than re-create the wheel when making the second bar chart, let’s save some time by simply copying the first chart.

Step 6: Populate the second chart with Coalition B’s data.

Use the “select data” feature to put Coalition B’s percentages into the chart.

Step 7: Adjust the second chart’s bar color and title.

Step 8: Delete the second chart’s axis labels.

Yep, you’re right, the second chart’s bars are going to get waaaaaay too long. We’ll fix this in Step 9.

Step 9: Re-size the second chart.

Here’s my super scientific secret for making sure each chart is the same size: I measure the plot area with a business card.

First, adjust the first chart’s plot area so that it’s the width of a business card or post-it note.

Next, I adjust the second chart’s plot area so that it’s the same width as my business card.

Step 10: Paste the charts into PowerPoint or Word.

Select both charts and paste them into PowerPoint or Word at the same time. Here’s what it looks like on a slide. Looks like a single chart!

Bonus

Click here to download my Excel file.