“Excel isn’t explicitly a data visualization tool, it’s a spreadsheet,” says Excel developer and consultant Jon Peltier. However, one of Excel’s strengths is its flexibility, he adds.

How to create data bars in Excel. 1. Select the cells you want to apply the data bars to. You can select a single cell, a range of cells, a table, or the entire sheet.

First, open the Excel application and retrieve the spreadsheet you're pulling the data from. The bar graph needs to have a range of data before you can make it. 1.

The first step in making a spreadsheet readable is to tidy up the cell formatting. By smartly using cell borders, shading, ...