SparkMaker 4.0

Sparklines for Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and HTML documents

SparkMaker is an add-in for Microsoft®
Office that creates sparklines (mini-graphs) to visualize numerical
data in dashboards, spreadsheets, reports and presentations created
with Excel, Word and PowerPoint. SparkMaker 4 uses a new
"minimized-clicks" approach which helps you automatically condense your
data into sparklines.

Sparklines, a concept invented by Edward Tufte,
compress large amounts of data into intense, word-sized graphics, such as:

A company's revenues over time as a bar chart 5.7 Mio.

An exchange rate over several years as a line 1.30

Survey results as pie charts 70 %

A
sparkline is a miniature chart, a mini graph, for example a bar graph
or some other small diagram. This info viz concept aims to increase
visual information density. Whether you want to create a meaningful
dashboard, an informative management report, a concise sales report, an
executive dashboard, a business intelligence (BI) dashboard, a KPI
cockpit or some information display for monitoring quantitative data -
this visualization technique surely is worth a look. SparkMaker is a
Windows software to easily produce and display these little diagrams
that fit in the cell of an Excel grid as well as in the lines of a
report written in Word and anywhere in the slides of PowerPoint.

Excel functions for dynamic sparklines

A
set of user-defined functions for Excel XP, 2003 and Excel 2007 (new)
lets you generate sparklines that automatically update whenever data
has changed. With simple expressions like "=Sparkline(...)", you can
create cell-adherent, dynamic sparklines directly in the cells of your
Excel sheets. With these in-cell mini-graphs, it is possible to design
information-rich, dynamic controlling instruments for your business by
adding concise visualization to your reports and analyses.

simple sparkline function in Excel

New user interface

new!

A
completely redesigned user interface now integrates all your sparkline
needs in a single dialog which minimizes click activity. Create all
variants of sparklines with this dialog, either as sparkline formulae
in Excel or as static sparklines in any Office document (Word,
PowerPoint, Excel) and always benefit from the same intuitive and
efficient user interface. Sparklines condense information so the goal
was to condense their creation process, too. The result is a dialog 60%
smaller than before which ensures 60% more focus on the essential
process of creating information dense data representations with
sparklines.

In-cell graphing in Excel, enabled by the statistical add-in SparkMaker, is
used for performance measurement, to prepare financial reports, to setup a digital dashboard, and more.
Instead of a gauge or speedometer, you can insert a mini graph (a minimized diagram).

SparkMaker main dialog

SparkMaker dialog

Dynamic reports and dashboards in Excel

Below,
an example of a monthly sales report features net revenues for several
product categories and sparklines are used to show the history of the
last twelve months of revenues. This report clearly illustrates that
notebook sales have decreased significantly and require management
attention.

Sales report in Excel with sparklines

See more examples

Export your sparklines to an HTML ticker

SparkMaker
allows you to directly export your sparklines to an HTML ticker. Define
the sparklines in your SparkMaker dialog and create an HTML document
automatically that you can integrate into your web site. For instance,
enhance your intranet with current figures of your company's
performance, thus create awareness for controlling figures and
distribute information in your company in a non-intrusive way using
only a small portion of your screen real estate.

Stationary PCs

Portable PCs

Monitors

Multi-color sparklines

Two
variants of functions for sparklines are provided by SparkMaker:
single-color and multi-color sparkline functions. The benefit of
single-color functions is that their result is displayed in the same
cell in which the function itself is located. However, such functions
do not allow to highlight subsections of a sparkline with different
colors or display numerical values adjacent to the sparkline. For these
purposes, SparkMaker offers multi-color sparkline functions which
require two cells: one for the result (your sparkline) and one for the
formula.

Single-color	Multi-color

Trend indicators for sparkline functions

Supplementary
insight into your data is optionally provided by trend arrows that
geometrically depict the course of the figure. You can now use these
statistically grounded indicators in your dynamic sparkline functions
(multi-color only).

Formats

The sparklines are generated either from specifically crafted
TrueType Fonts (TTF), the Bissantz SparkFonts,
or as images. Choose between several sparkline types and styles, add
numerical data, customize colors and export your sparklines to popular
graphic formats like BMP, GIF, JPG or PNG. The data to be shown in such
images can be read from the current document, pasted from the
clipboard, or edited in a textbox within the SparkMaker dialog.

New sparkline font

SparkMaker employs TrueType Fonts to generate sparklines, the so-called SparkFonts
invented in 2005 by Bissantz & Company. Just like a word consists
of letters the Bissantz sparklines consist of SparkFont characters
(e. g. bars or line segments). The concatenation of formatted
characters results in a "textual image" of the sparkline. We now
provide a new line font with unparalleled precision and clarity. It
displays sparklines on-screen in high quality even with low
resolutions. This font permits you to design information-dense reports
and dashboards. Print-outs of sparklines are excellent.

Feature list

Supports various sparkline types: bars, lines, winner/loser (whiskers), pies

Creates sparklines directly in your Excel, Word, and PowerPoint documents

Generates sparklines either textually using TrueType Fonts or as vector-based images (Enhanced Metafile Format)

User-defined functions for dynamic sparkline updates in Excel XP, 2003 and 2007

Flexible scaling of sparklines

Additional statistical information: standard deviation, trend

Multiple formatting options, like color and landmark values
New: now also available in sparkline functions

Allows for high quality print-outs

Exports to popular bitmap image file formats: BMP, GIF, JPG, PNG, TIFF

Supports Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, Office 2003 and Office 2007

Download and pricing

Start enhancing your Excel sheets and other Office documents with sparklines! Free 30-day trial with unlimited functionality!

Download SparkMaker
Free 30-day trial

All
users may test SparkMaker for up to 30 days. After the trial-period has
ended the Free edition can be used without any additional license. To
benefit from functions of the Basic or Pro edition please obtain a license in our web shop.
Prices for a single license start at US-$ 59.95 (excluding sales
tax) for the Basic edition while the Pro edition comes for
US-$ 199.95. Benefit from our significant reductions for multiple
licenses! For details on prices and applicable sales taxes, please
refer to our web shop. Details on licensing issues are provided in our License Agreement for SparkMaker.

For any questions concerning SparkMaker, please contact
sparklinetools@bissantz.de.

Microsoft
and the Office logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of
Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

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Creating sparklines