Learn Excel 2011 for Mac

Using Data Bars

A data bar is a horizontal bar that appears in a cell to graphically represent the value in a corresponding cell. Normally, you'll use data bars to represent the values of multiple cells so that you can see the relationship among the cells' values.

For example, the worksheet in Figure 8–1 uses data bars to show the sales by five different salespeople for April, May, June, and the second quarter of the year as a whole. Each cell that contains a data bar has the same value as the cell to its left, so the data bar in cell C2 illustrates the value shown in cell B2. Looking at the data bars, you can easily see that although Salesperson Smith had a weak April and a shoddy May, her strong June sales brought her up to a respectable result ...