When we refer to programs focused on working with spreadsheets, we have several alternatives of this type. But there is no doubt that among them, the one that integrates with Office , is the most used and known, specifically we are referring to Microsoft‘s Excel and its add-ins.
We are talking here about a powerful spreadsheet-centric solution that does not stop growing over time and based on new updates. For much this is a solution focused on the professional market, but not much less. We can affirm that this is a valid program for all types of users and work environments. Here come into play from the domestic, to the most professional.
At the moment, many users around the world carry out basic calculation tasks at home, while large companies also keep their accounts. Therefore we could say that the complexity of this specific program is based on how much we want to delve into it. For all this, we find a huge number of additional elements that are integrated into the program and that try to make things easier for us.
Types of objects that we can use in Excel
A good part of these elements can be found in the Insert menu of the main interface of the application. Specifically here we will see many of these additional elements that we are talking about such as photos , tables, graphs , maps, etc. As you can imagine, all this will be of enormous help to us when it comes to giving additional value to our projects here. At first, as you know, this is a program that focuses on working with numerical data, but it goes much further.
As we mentioned, all these additional elements, and more that we will talk about later, help to improve our spreadsheets. But let’s not forget that all this is based, at least initially, on dealing with numbers. Therefore, here we cannot ignore the use of the almost mandatory formulas proposed by the Redmond program. In turn, we find basic formulas for operations such as addition or subtraction, or other complex ones that even serve us to carry out programming tasks.
As we mentioned before, everything will depend on the needs we have, the knowledge, or how much we want to deepen the program. To all this that we tell you, we can also add other additional additions known as add-ins that we use to increase the versatility of Excel . These by default are not included in the application itself, but we can install them quickly. Some of them from Microsoft’s own official store, others from third-party websites.
Add-ins to format and color Excel sheets
The main objective of these elements that we comment on, is none other than to improve the program as such, increasing its versatility to a great extent. We find Excel add-ins related to a multitude of tasks, both functional and in appearance. Here we are going to focus on some of these elements that will help you color and format the spreadsheets with which we work. We find these elements on certain Internet websites that we only have to download and install.
In the same way, the program itself proposes an official store in which we find a multitude of elements of this type. We access it through the menu option Insert / Complements / Store.
Here we already find several categories to make it easier to locate what we really need.
Symbols and characters
This is one of the add-ins offered by the official Excel store itself and it will be very useful for formatting our sheets. You already know that the main objective of the program is the treatment with numerical data, but in this case working with texts is also very important as well as habitual. Therefore, here we mention this addition because thanks to Symbols and characters we will be able to make use of these texts much better.
Specifically, the add-in facilitates the use of special characters in the Microsoft program and provides us with words with phonetic signs, symbols, check marks or emoticons.
Excel Colorizer Add-in
On the other hand we find another element of this type that will surely be very useful when customizing and coloring your Excel sheet. Specifically, it is the Excel Colorizer Add-in that you can access from here . This is a plugin that improves the color-based spreadsheet that we can implement.
It gives us a visual interest through four coloring options that it proposes. These are uniform, vertical, horizontal and matrix, creating gradient effects and custom color patterns. Say it only works with Excel 2016.
Microsoft Visio Data Visualizer
Here we have a program for the use of numerical data and formulas . But of course, all this is something that we must use and show on the screen in the best way. Precisely to help us structure and visualize data in Excel, we can use Microsoft Visio Data Visualizer. This is an add-in that we can also find in the program’s own store.
It is worth mentioning that this that we are commenting on, we achieved it thanks to the creation of high quality Visio flow diagrams. It also offers us other flowcharts with cross functions and organization charts already predefined for use.
The XY Chart Labeler
Here we talk about another interesting Excel add-ins that you can download from this link that will be helpful in certain circumstances. Saying that a highly requested feature is the ability to add labels to XY chart data points. Well, this is an add-on that takes care of just that.
Actually it is an XY chart labeler that adds this function to Excel to improve the visualization and display of these charts. It has several additional options so that we can make better use of all of it. For example, add labels to data series points in charts based on any range of cells. We can also move labels or make use of the manual labeller .
Pickit Free Images
On the other hand, if you are interested in adding images to your sheets, the Pickit Free Images plugin can help you greatly. In fact, it is one of the highest rated visual add-ins when it comes to complementing Excel . It is worth mentioning that you can download it from this link that belongs to Microsoft itself.
To give us an idea, it gives us access to photos, icons, and clipart from a public library to use in our Excel projects. Therefore we give an added value to our work here at a visual and design level, very interesting. These public images are legal and free to use.
Geographic Heat Map
In this case we find another complement from Microsoft itself that will be very helpful to organize the data in maps. To do this, based on the numerical data that we have previously entered in Excel, parts of the world are colored so that everything has a better understanding. For this we only have to download the add-in from here .