The system extracts data by learning from a user’s selection of data they wish to capture into Excel. The more selections, the more the system is trained. An example scenario: You wish to import and track data from MSN’s weather page. Visit the site using the tool, enter Data Capture mode, and select a row or two of data from the table. Then click Select Similar, and the system will find similar data based on your previous selections.

The add-in is still in early beta so you test it on your own risk. I will get back to this add-in once I’ve had time to test it.

Version: Tested on Excel 2003

Download: NanoCharts demo (downloaded 1479 times)

Sparklines, or Micro charts, a concept invented by graphic design guru Edward Tufte , compress large amounts of data into intense, word-sized graphics, like for example:

The Sparkline approach can be a highly effective way to present data in budget reports or other types of executive summaries, since trends and relations are made visual in a very small space.

There are a couple of large developers offering commercial add-ins for excel to create Sparklines: Bissantz’s SparkMaker and Bonavista Systems’ MicroCharts. These are available as free trial downloads, full versions start from around $50.

I wanted to try to make a simple tech demo of the Sparklines concept in Excel and ended up writing a script that adds a Bar Chart Sparkline, or NanoChart as I decided to call them, to a column of data. You can see a screenshot of the demo below.

This is a demo with very limited functionality, but it’s free, and you can modify it to suit your needs. In the future I will develop the NanoCharts to make them more flexible and add more options, like allowing data in rows, customizeable chart type, color and scaling. Make sure to check back.

Download: NanoCharts demo (downloaded 1479 times)