Sparklines are in-cell charts in Microsoft Excel that are easy to create and extremely helpful, but they can be more insightful with just a few specific settings.

You can quickly highlight the trends by using sparklines, which are mini graphs of selected data. In the Excel screenshot below, for example, the sparklines in Column F are mini line graphs showing ...

Sam Radakovitz developed a feature called “sparklines” for Microsoft Office Excel 2010 that lets users transform large amounts of data into small, at-a-glance displays that fit into a single cell.

VIDEO: Adding mini charts in the cells of your spreadsheet is great feature, which was added to Excel in 2010 but still remains massively underutilized.

An curved arrow pointing right. Sparklines are word-sized charts that live in individual cells. This great feature was added to Excel in 2010 but still remains massively underutilized. Produced by ...

Next, tidy up the appearance of your text. Stick to clean, professional fonts like Calibri, Arial, or Times New Roman, and use consistent sizes—say 12pt for headers and 11pt for all other text. Align ...