The first and easiest method to create a dashboard in Excel is to use a pre-designed template. You can find a Semi-monthly home budget dashboard template in Excel that you can use to do the same.

Not anymore: Excel 2013’s table tools include features that make it easy to link charts and cells, perform searches, and create dynamically updated reports, just like—yes—a relational database.

Excel for the web supports both PivotTables and PivotCharts in an existing .xlsx file. You can also create a PivotTable in Excel for the web, but you can’t group columns.

Adding a drop-down list in Excel is a quick and efficient way to choose predefined data. Here's how to create a drop-down list in Microsoft Excel.

Chart the Summary Data Click "Insert" in Excel's ribbon. Click "Pie" in the Charts group, and click one of the "2D Pie Chart" options to create a blank chart. Right-click the chart.

Step 2: Make an Excel Bar Chart To start to visualize your data, you’ll first create an Excel stacked bar chart from the spreadsheet. Select the “Start date” column, so it’s highlighted.

Microsoft recently made some significant enhancements to its Visio add-in for Excel, enabling users to create Visio diagrams from within Excel. Here's how it works.

To create data bars in Excel, select your cells and then choose data bars from Conditional Formatting.