Chart Visualizations in Excel Power View

Power View is an Excel Visualization tool that allows you to build visually appealing graphs and charts, dashboards for management, and reports that can be issued daily, weekly, or monthly. When we think of Microsoft Excel, we think of various tools such as Formulae, which makes an analyst’s job simpler, PivotTables, which allows the user to analyze data distributed across a vast number of columns and rows, graph library, which is as comprehensive as any other programming language and so on. This article will provide an overview of Chart visualizations.

Chart Visualization

There are several Chart choices in Power View. Power View’s charts are interactive. Additionally, the Charts are interactive in a presentation context, allowing you to emphasize the analysis results dynamically. Charts can have numerous numeric variables and series. A chart’s design choices include displaying and removing – labels, legends, and titles. The following chart visualizations are available in Power View:

• Scatter Chart
• Bubble Chart
• Pie Chart
• Line Chart
• Bar Chart
• Column Chart

Example:

Step 1: First, enter data in the format shown below.

Step 2: Navigate to the Insert tab on the Excel ribbon and select the Power View option at the end of the list.

Step 3: When you select the Power View option, a power view report will be loaded and generated within the same worksheet. As illustrated in the picture below, you will have a power view report:

Step 4: Within Power View Fields, pick the Month, Quarter, and Sales Columns from the Range1 section. The ∑ sign is in the Quarter, Sales, and Percentage of Sales columns. It is present because those columns contain numeric data and may be summed.

Step 5: We will now include a graph. Navigate to the Design tab at the top of the ribbon to explore several design possibilities under the Power View Report sheet. Switch Visualization is one among them. This option allows you to include graphs in the Power View Report. Select the choice from the Other Chart.

Step 6: Select the Scatter option from the Other Chart dropdown menu.

Scatter Chart

A scatter chart always has two value axes: one set of numerical data running horizontally and another set of numerical data running vertically. Each dot in the scatter chart below represents a month, with the horizontal X axis representing the Quarter and the vertical Y axis representing Sales. Power view can distribute these data points evenly or unevenly across the horizontal axis.  It is determined by the data that the chart represents.

Bubble Chart

Follow the same steps to get the bubble chart of months and quarters. But in the bubble chart, you need to add the third numeric column that defines the size.

A bubble chart, a scatterplot extension, is commonly used to demonstrate correlations between three or more numerical variables. A single data point is represented by a bubble chart. The value of each bubble is indicated by its 1) horizontal position on the x-axis, 2) vertical position on the y-axis, and 3) size. In animation, the color of the bubble or its movement can occasionally represent additional dimensions. You may modify the Scatter Chart view to the Bubble Chart presentation by adding a third numeric column that defines the size of the data points.

Pie Chart

Follow the same steps to get the pie chart of months and quarters. In Power View, pie charts can be basic or complex. You may create a pie chart that drills down when you double-click a slice or one that displays sub-slices within the bigger color slices. A pie chart can be cross-filtered with another chart. Assume you choose a bar in a bar chart. The portion of the pie chart that corresponds to that bar is highlighted, while the remainder of the pie is greyed out. The Pie chart clearly shows that there are too many slices of months. Pie Charts operate best when the number of categories is 8 or less. By filtering the data, you may limit the number of categories.

Line Chart

Line charts are used to compare data points from many data series. Line charts align all category data along the horizontal (category) axis and all numerical value data along the vertical (value) axis. Months will be presented to the left or right, and the Line Chart will be displayed appropriately. Months are shown horizontally, while numerical value data is displayed vertically.

Bar Chart

Go to the Design tab and, this time, pick Clustered Bar from the Bar Chart dropdown choice inside the Switch Visualization menu. This option allows you to see all of your sales and months in a single chart.

Bar charts are used to compare data points from many data series. In a Bar Chart, categories are grouped vertically and values are organized horizontally. Consider utilizing a bar chart in any of the following situations: You have one or more data series that you would want to plot,  You want to compare data from several categories, and The axis labels are somewhat lengthy. There are three types of bar charts in Power View: stacked, 100% stacked, and clustered. Months are shown vertically, whereas numerical data is displayed horizontally.

Column Chart

A column chart may be used to depict data that is organized in columns or rows on a spreadsheet. Column charts are great for displaying data changes over time or presenting comparisons between things. Column charts include horizontal axes for categories and vertical axes for values. There are three column chart subtypes available in Power View: stacked, 100% stacked and clustered. The months are shown horizontally, while the numerical data is displayed vertically.

Power View’s charts are interactive. When you click on a value in one of the charts in Power View, that value is highlighted, and all of the tables, matrices, and tiles in Power View are filtered to that value.