11/06/2025
11 am PT / 12 pm MT / 1 pm CT / 2 pm ET
*approximate length: 45 minutes to 1 hour
Presenter: David Ringstrom, CPA
In this presentation author and Excel expert David Ringstrom, CPA, shares lots of tricks and techniques you can implement to create, streamline, and even automate Excel charts. You'll see how to build self-expanding charts that automatically display new data, along with self-updating chart titles. David will show how to create a rolling chart to display results such as trailing twelve-sales. You'll also learn how to create and use customized chart templates, build a Waterfall Chart to illustrate a financial statement, and troubleshoot frustrating chart issues.
David is the author of “Microsoft Excel 365 for Dummies”, “Exploring Microsoft Excel’s Hidden Treasures”, and has written or co-authored six other books. He demonstrates every technique at least twice: first, on a PowerPoint slide with numbered steps, and second, in the subscription-based Excel for Microsoft 365. David draws your attention to any differences in Excel 2021, 2019 or 2016 during the presentation and in his detailed handouts. The handouts include an Excel workbook with most of the examples he uses during his demonstrations.
Excel for Microsoft 365 is a subscription-based product that receives periodic feature updates. Conversely, perpetually licensed versions have year numbers in their names and do not receive any feature updates.
Who should attend: Professionals seeking to utilize Excel's charting features more effectively.
Topics typically covered:
- Preventing chart resize issues by using Excel tables.
- Most features and functions work in Excel for Mac as well but expect differences.
- Illustrating financial statements with the Waterfall chart feature.
- Applying a consistent look and feel to your charts by way of chart templates.
- Filtering data within PivotTables by way of the Slicer feature.
- Creating line, column, and win/loss sparklines to show data trends.
- Using the Recommended Charts feature to create suitable charts from data with a couple of mouse clicks.
- Streamlining the process of resizing charts after you manually add data.
- Building a basic chart within an Excel worksheet.
- Displaying data on two different axes with Combo charts.
- Duplicating the formatting of one chart into a second chart.
- Utilizing the Error Checking command to locate cells that contain errors within a worksheet.
Learning objectives:
- Identify the chart type in Excel 2016 and later that is particularly suited to presenting financial statements in chart form.
- Identify the area of a chart that you right-click to copy the formatting in anticipation of pasting the formatting to other charts.
- Recall how to access the Save As Template command that creates chart templates.
Level: Basic
David H. Ringstrom, CPA, is an author and nationally recognized instructor who teaches scores of webinars each year. His Excel courses are based on 25 years of consulting and teaching experience. David’s mantra is “Either you work Excel, or it works you,” so he focuses on what he sees users don’t, but should, know about Microsoft Excel. His goal is to empower you to use Excel more effectively.