Excel Dashboards and Reports For Dummies

the concept of lines is used to indicate time — consider timelines, family lines, bloodlines, and so on

Line charts are the kings of trending

Icons and shapes do a much better job at conveying your

possible, consider using modern-looking fonts such as Calibri and Segoe UI in your reports and dashboards

Figure 3-7: Use number formatting to eliminate clutter in your table and draw attention to key metrics

Try to use the natural white space between the columns to partition sections. If borders are necessary, format them to lighter hues than your data; light grays are typically ideal

Figure 3-4: Minimize the use of borders and use the single accounting underlines to accent the column headers

You should always endeavor to de-emphasize borders and gridlines wherever you can

borders get in the way of quickly reading the data in a table. Because borders help separate data in nicely partitioned sections, this may seem counterintuitive, but the reality is that a table’s borders are the first thing your eyes see when you look at a table

Use effective number formatting to avoid inundating your table with too much ink.
Subdue your labels and headers