SparkMaker 4
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 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.
Decent user interface
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 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
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.
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 |
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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!
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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First Steps with SparkMaker
Learn how to create your own dynamic sparklines in Excel
Sparklines and OLAP databases
Using an OLAP database? Sparklines with SparkMaker offer deep insight into your business data!
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