To think I can do this in Excel?

[Notworryingdarling]

Looking for some help kind Mumsnetters! Not sure if I am missing an obvious way to do this. I have a table in Excel, it's not showing data in a way that needs to be analysed just representing something. So it's a list of criteria down the side, with a list of elements across the top and Xs in certain cells to show which criteria appear in which elements.

I want a more visually appealing version of this to share with stakeholders. Anyone got any ideas on quick simple ways to do this, either in Excel itself or using another (preferably free!) tool? I have visions of being able to upload it somewhere to get a nice visual graphic version but can't find anything that does that, maybe it's a pipe dream and I need to spend time manually making it look good but I thought I would throw the question out there! Any help gratefully received!

Thank you I will look at all of these! It's not a huge list and it's not actually children in classes, the better example kis probably showing how units in one exam spec are moved across to units in a new spec.

So it's basically a look up table, but you want it to look pretty for no reason which has any connection of making your message any easier to understand?

How have you ordered the rows and columns? It will look better if you shuffle the order so that, taking the analogy further, and assuming it's children and the subjects they're taking, so that the children taking very similar combinations of subjects are together, and the subjects which tend to be taken together are together.

As well as looking tidier, it'll show which groups of subjects tend to be taken together, which might be interesting.

But it will make it less easy to see which subjects Amelia is taking, or who is doing French.

I'd also, instead of using X's,simply colour in the square.

Ha ha yes in a way it is making it look pretty for no reason to do with the data as such, more so it can be used in a presentation/ information leaflet and look nice 😀

Like this?

You really don't need power bi or any of the software/apps people are suggesting.

You could literally use "fill" to edit colours to make it even more "jazzy"

Literally did the attached while making a cuppa........

You can make a graph or chart in Excel - have a look at this:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/create-a-chart-from-start-to-finish-0baf399e-dd61-4e18-8a73-b3fd5d5680c2

How basic are you talking? This is just conditional formatting to pop the "x". But to be fair @FrangipaniBlue example is great.

First highly recommend saving a back up copy before you try any of this so you can get back to the original.

Simplest way is to apply a filter to the top row.
filter each column with non blanks
color each cell that has an x in it.

then if you want centre the x and make it bold.
Unfilter the column and move onto the next column Filter and repeat
you could use alternate colour for each column.

you could also use find and replace so find any cell with an X and replace with a blank and cell colour.

you can then copy to any other programs - word power point etc but use Paste Special and paste as picture.

Good luck.

You guys are amazing, thank you so much for all the brilliant suggestions! Yes @FrangipaniBlue that would do the trick, thank you! Would you mind giving me some pointers about how you got to that please?

I just inserted a table into PowerPoint same way as you would in a word document. Then when you highlight the table you can select any of the colour presets from the format tab along the top.

For the ticks just go to insert symbol, again on the bar across the top and it brings up all different ones, you can use a tick or a cross or anything.

I made the font format of the ones for "new syllabus" to bold and for old syllabus made the font colour 50% transparent.

Thanks @FrangipaniBlue I wouldn't usually try PowerPoint and I know someone else suggested it as well so I will give it a go today!

Once again thanks so much to everyone who's replied, I think I've been overthinking a bit as in a pretty new job and a bit of imposter syndrome and this seemed like it should be simple but got frozen with it so you've all helped massively 😊