SparkLines - What's the Purpose?

Office 2010 is Microsoft's next release of its office productivity suite. In the suite is long-standing product Microsoft Excel. Throughout the years, Excel has retooled it graphic interface to make it more user-friendly and aesthetically pleasing. Although Excel is the spreadsheet application of choice for many businesses and it is used extensively for personal uses such as taxes and contact management among others, one new, anticipated Excel 2010 feature is "Sparklines." The feature is displayed in the "Insert" tab of the ribbon display. There are three types of graphs you can choose from: line, column, and win/loss. These are three basic graphs types that have been available in Excel Charts for a number of years. Essentially the difference with "Sparklines" is that it is a graph contained within a single cell vs. a chart transposed on top of the cells. Usually when you add a graph it ends up taking a sizable portion of your spreadsheet document, so from that perspective it's a space saver. However, it is hardly anything but amazing; it is after all just a graph which is nothing new to previous Excel versions. It is also a highlighted feature that Microsoft has been promoting. So, what is the downside? Well, first of all you really can not put very many data points in the graph as it tends to smooth out the curves and gives a distorted perception of what the graph is really looks like. It is more flat than usual especially if there is a large spread between data points. In short, it's not that impressive, but in some uses (with a small data set) may provide a nice, simplistic view without the need of creating a large visual. Essentially, it comes down to what you are doing. The purpose of Excel's "Sparklines" should be nothing more than to display general trends. If you need any detail in your graph, you should seek out a full-blown, classic graph so that the integrity of your data is not lost. In summation, "Sparklines" is a feature with some practical use, but its not as powerful of a tool that the media and Microsoft tries to hype it up to be.

Although "Sparklines" may not be as impressive of a tool that the tech community makes it out to be, it doesn't mean the Excel 2010 is junk. In fact, from my experience, it features a host of minor improvements that add up in a big way when it comes to ease-of-use and user-friendliness. So, it is worth a shot to check out and learn more about Excel 2010 and the entire Office 2010 productivity suite for that matter.