On the Insert tab, click Sparklines, and then click the kind of sparkline that you want. Select the data range for the sparklines. Some even have released handy add-ins so that non-power users can easily create. Just google 'Excel dial chart' or 'Excel gauge chart' or 'Excel speedometer chart' and you'll see the legions of others before me - Jon Peltier, Andy Pope, Bill Jelen, to name some major influences on me - who have done their own versions of this type of chart.
![]() The name consists of the color name in the first row, “Aqua”, then the label from above the table, “Accent 5”, and finally the adjustment of the color, “Darker 25%”.For Text 2 and the Accent colors, the sequence of shades goes Lighter 80%, Lighter 60%, Lighter 40%, Lighter 0%/Darker 0% (the baseline shade), Darker 25%, and Darker 50%. Names like “Black, Text 1, Lighter 35%” and “Aqua, Accent 5, Darker 25%”.This table shows the names for all color tiles in the default Office 2007-2010 theme. The colors are somewhat dull, but they are a major improvement over the Excel 2003 colors, and reportedly these colors are distinguishable by those with the most common color vision deficiencies.As you mouse over the color chooser, names of the colors pop up. This shows the default Office 2007-2010 theme. Office 2013 has a new theme, which is a little livelier than the old 2007-2010 theme, further improving on the Classic Excel colors. Theme ColorsWe’ve been looking at the default Office 2007-2010 color theme, but there are many more to choose from, which you can access from the Page Layout tab. I also wish there was a way via the user interface to adjust this percentage, but you need VBA if you want to keep a color associated with the theme. I wish they’d decided to use Lightness values of 25%, 50%, and 75% instead of the chosen 40%, 60%, and 80%. Also, the standard colors are unchanged.At the bottom of the list of color themes is a button labeled Customize Colors, which leads to this dialog. The color names have changed, but the percentages are all the same. I’ve actually grown to like working in Excel 2013, much more than in 2010 and especially in 2007 I suspect the happier colors have contributed to my acceptance of 2013.Here are the names of the colors in the Office 2013 theme. The Office 2013 colors are brighter, and look very good in charts. The 2010 theme’s colors are somewhat drab, although a major improvement over the default Excel 2003 palette, and reportedly friendly to those with color vision deficiencies. But you could use other colors, including the standard colors from the bottom row, and using the color dialog (More Colors) you could access all the millions of colors available to Windows.When a workbook’s color theme is changed, all colors that were selected from the theme are subject to change, but any colors defined using More Colors will remain unchanged. You can’t change them in the theme color dialog above, you can only change the main colors in the first row.As with Classic Excel, each workbook has its own theme, which may be shared with other workbooks through the custom theme mechanism. Turquoise, for example, is somewhat deeper than Aqua.Notice also the percentages. Notice that Excel tries to guess the names of the colors, or it probably has a lookup table. Then you can name and save your custom theme.Here I’ve populated the accent colors with pure, fully saturated versions of the Office 2007-2010 theme.Here are the color names for my custom palette. There is a preview of how the colors look together, and each color dropdown opens a color picker that lets you access all 16+ million combination of red, green, and blue pixels. You can select as many different colors as you need, but only the ten most recently used colors stay in the color chooser.Remember those Excel 2003 charts? Here’s a simple stacked column chart.It’s a little better when I use my custom Excel 2003 palette, but there are still too many dark lines everywhere.If you clean up the dark lines, the Excel 2003 chart doesn’t look too bad.Here’s the chart using the default Office 2007-2010 color theme. The New/Current graphic updates as you adjust the color.You can also select the HSL color model and enter hue, saturation, and luminance values directly.When you’ve selected a new color, it appears in a new category of Recent Colors. Or if you know the RGB values you can simply type them into the boxes. You can change the color by dragging the white crosshairs in the hue-saturation rectangle to the left, or by dragging the black triangle up and down the luminance slider. The Standard tab shows a hexagonal pattern of colors, with the color of the selected object highlighted in the hex and along the bottom if the color lies on the white-to-gray-to-black axis.If you select a different color, the New/Current graphic in the bottom corner lets you compare the newly selected color with the original color.If the hex doesn’t provide just the proper shade, click on the Custom tab. Brewer, Pennsylvania State University. As mentioned earlier, one good source is the color picker at ColorBrewer2.org, thanks to Cynthia A. I can’t say that it’s any more legible, but less drab is good.Here I’ve applied my bright and bold custom theme.Ouch! It’s a good reminder to use a reputable source for your color scheme. Much better than the default 2003 chart, though.Here is the same chart after changing to the Office 2013 theme. Can You Do Sparklines In Excel 2008 Series In TheIn this way it somewhat resembles the long lost floating tearaway toolbars from Classic Excel. I’ve clicked the Fill Color dropdown, and the familiar color chooser pops up.The taskbar can be undocked by clicking on its top edge and dragging it to where you want to use it. Its default position is docked to the right edge of the workbook window. Of course, you could right click on the object and choose the Format button from near the bottom of the pop-up menu, but Ctrl+1 is cooler.So select the series in the chart and click Ctrl+1 and in Excel 2013 the Format Data Series task pane opens. I use it so much I find myself trying to use it in other programs, and it never does anything.What Ctrl+1 does in Excel is open the formatting dialog or task pane for the selected object. I’ll illustrate with formatting the fill color of one of the series in the column chart.One of the most useful shortcuts in Excel is Ctrl+1 (that’s the numeral one). Mac cleaner wont go awayWhen you select the Solid Fill option, the Fill Color dialog appears, and clicking it shows the color chooser. In Excel 20 there is a formatting dialog, which floats modelessly over the worksheet.
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