[MUSIC PLAYING] INSTRUCTOR: In this Excel video, I will show you how to use the Excel sparklines feature to create very nifty charts right inside of cells. Let's get started. 

So here I have a spreadsheet that shows a list of students and their test results on a standardized test, and it's basically the same content being tested over time four times throughout the year, and I'd like to see how their progress is going. And, of course, I could scan through this and make some judgments that way, but I'd like to have a visual representation here at the right that shows the trend. 

To do this, all I have to do is go here to cell H2 and click on it. And then up here on the ribbon, I'm going to click on the Insert tab, and there's some great chart options here. But notice this little group here, the Sparklines group. I'm going to go ahead and click on Line. 

And at this point, Excel wants me to show it what data I want a trendline for. So if we look here at Albert's scores you can see that his grade level is listed, his student number. That's not so important when it comes to the trend line. What I really care about is the scores that you see here. So I'm going to go ahead and click on D2, and I'll hold the click, and I'll just drag across to get all four test scores. And you can see that this dialog box updates showing D2 through G2. That looks good. And I'll go ahead and click OK, and look at that. I get a beautiful trendline right inside of H2. This doesn't require a separate chart that I have to scroll over to see or that I have to place maybe over my data. There's no difficulty at all being able to see what the trendline is for Albert's scores. 

Now, at this point, do I need to do all of that work again for each of the other students? No, I don't. All I have to do is go to cell H2, and you can see in the lower-right corner of H2 there's a little green square. That's the Excel fill handle or autofill handle. And I'll click and hold my click on that little square, and I'll just pull down all the way to the bottom of this data. Release the mouse button, and you can see that the same option is extended all the way down the spreadsheet. 

So now at a glance, I can see that Debbie had a rough time during the middle of the year, but she recovered late. I can see that Era just progressed dramatically. So did Griselda and Sylvester and others. And I can see also which students struggled more toward the end. So this is a great feature. 

Now, at this point, look what I can do. I can click on one of these sparkline trendlines. Let's say Griselda's. And I could type maybe something like "Great improvement!" with an exclamation point. I tap Enter on the keyboard, and I'll expand column H by double clicking between H and I so that it fits in the cell. So now I have a comment on top of or behind that trendline. 

Now, if it makes it harder to see, maybe you don't want to do that. But I just want you to know that it is possible to type and still use that cell, even though there's a sparkline in the cell. 

Now, because I have sparklines in this spreadsheet, notice that Excel gives me an extra tab here on the ribbon. So if I click on sparkline, I have some great options. I could edit the data that I used to create the sparkline. In this case, I don't want to do that. I'm happy with the data that was selected. 

I could switch from a line chart to a column chart. You can see that that may or may not be easier to read. It might make more sense with other data. In my case, I think the typical line option is perfect. I could switch to win-loss. It looks like those are all considered wins, basically. So I think I'll stick with line. 

If I want to, I can have Excel mark the high point for each student and the low point, also negative points. In this case, that doesn't make sense. I could mark the first point and the last point. 

Now, if I choose to mark all of these, all I get is a dot at just about every point in the trendline, so you want to use this judiciously. I think I'll stick with high point and low point. 

Next, I can choose the style for my Excel sparklines. Maybe I want to use the color green, maybe black. Maybe I want the high points and low points to be in different colors. You can work with those options here in the style group. If you don't want to have to work with these visuals, you can just go straight here to sparkling Color and select it and Marker Color and select that. And we have even some additional options here at the right where you can try changing the axis, putting in some custom values, et cetera. 

So as you use Excel, especially with data that may change over time-- I think test scores is a great example, but it could also be sales, first-quarter through fourth-quarter sales or monthly sales. It could be site traffic for a website, whatever it might be. But any data that changes over time, you might think of sparklines, and I hope that you will and that you'll try it out and see if it's helpful to you. Now, sparklines can be used for other things too, but at a minimum, I hope you'll think of it when you think of changes to data over time. 

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