How to use Quick Analysis in Excel

The world is increasingly data-driven, meaning that the decisions you make every day are strongly influenced by data and the insights learned from it.

If you’re a marketer or business owner who wants to attract new customers, data provides the background for achieving this goal. You need to gather deeper information.

How to use Quick Analysis in Excel

How to use Quick Analysis in Excel

This discussion will focus on the role that Excel plays in data analysis and how the Quick Analysis Tool in Excel helps you make sense of complex spreadsheets.

You will also learn about the best data analysis tools and alternatives of the Quick Analysis toolbar in excel, which allows you to produce better visual depictions of your data. In this blog you will learn:

  • Getting To Know Excel
  • What Is Quick Analysis Tool in Excel?
  • Accessing Quick Analysis Toolbar in Excel
  • Available Options in Quick Analysis Toolbar in Excel
  • Is there an Easy Excel Tool for Quick Data Analysis?
  • ChartExpo: A Quick Analysis Tool For Excel
  • How To Install ChartExpo In Excel

Getting To Know Excel

Excel is the number one tool for organizing raw data and running calculations. The program can chart data, perform complex computations, generate pivot tables and so much more.

It’s almost impossible to find a modern company that does not use Excel in some capacity.

Spreadsheets are still by far one of the most useful tools for tracking and organizing numbers and other information. Even if you aren’t using Excel for marketing data analysis, you’re probably using some form of spreadsheets in your accounting.

Here’s a simple budget analysis that shows someone’s monthly expenses versus their salary.

How to use Quick Analysis in Excel

With a simple formula, the spreadsheet detects that this person has $960 left to spend each month after their expenses are paid.

What Is Quick Analysis Tool in Excel?

Making an expense spreadsheet is just the surface. Excel spreadsheets can be significantly more sophisticated and powerful.

Let’s say you have an Excel spreadsheet with your marketing campaign metrics. With this overload of numbers and data, it is difficult to see those valuable insights that help generate new customers.

This is where the Quick Analysis tool in Excel can help. This feature makes it easier to see trends and relationships between data points. When you click the Quick Analysis tool, you receive several options to help you make sense of the data.

Essentially, the Quick Analysis tool in Excel shows overview-level insights about your data.

You can even use Quick Analysis to make basic charts and diagrams of your data. When you visualize the numbers in your spreadsheet, it makes the insights more accessible. It is much easier to see trends than to calculate them.

Accessing Quick Analysis Toolbar in Excel

To access the Quick Analysis tool for Excel, select the cells that contain the data you want to analyze. You’ll see the Quick Analysis tool button appear at the bottom-right of your selected data.

How to use Quick Analysis in Excel

After you click the icon, you’ll see the Quick Analysis menu. This tool belt of options will help you interact with your data in various ways.

How to use Quick Analysis in Excel

If you’ve used Excel before, you should already be familiar with many of these tools. They can all be found in Excel’s main toolbar at the top of the page.

The benefit of using Quick Analysis is a matter of efficiency. You have all of these great options and tools right at your fingertips, from an easy-to-use mini-menu.

Available Options in Quick Analysis Toolbar in Excel

Here is a quick breakdown of the options available through the Quick Analysis toolbar.

  • Formatting
  • Charts
  • Totals
  • Tables
  • Sparklines

Let’s discuss each of them separately in detail.

  • Formatting

The Formatting menu in the Quick Analysis toolbar will show you several conditional formatting options.

You can add data bars and colors to help visualize your data results. Or, you can reorder your spreadsheet list to highlight specific values or your top performers.

For example, with one click, you can see the item with the highest value.

How to use Quick Analysis in Excel

  • Charts

Charts are used to display data visually. There are charting options that suit different types of data.

For instance, bar charts are superb for comparing values between categories. Meanwhile, line charts are good at looking at trend data over long time periods.

If you click Charts on the Quick Analysis toolbar, there are recommended charts for the data you have preselected. By hovering your mouse over an option, you can see a preview of what the chart will look like based on the data you’ve selected.

  • Totals

Totals can be used to run basic calculations of numbers in selected columns or rows. You have a few different functions to choose from, such as Sum, Average, Count and more.

The Quick Analysis toolbar makes it easy to calculate these values. It’s a lot faster than entering the calculations by hand.

  • Tables

Tables is arguably one of the most useful options in the Quick Analysis toolbar. It’s perfect for filtering, sorting and summarizing your data. Data is often entered without any thought to order or readability, especially when imported from other sources.

When creating a table from the data, you’ll also be shown a preview, similar to the Charts menu.

You can also choose to create a PivotTable. However, there is no preview available. When the PivotTable is created, you will have to enter your data into a blank table.

  • Sparklines

You can add a Sparkline at the end of a row or column to see how the data in that selection has progressed. A sparkline is a simple but helpful visualization.

It can be a line chart to see how the data has trended over time. Alternatively, it can appear as a progress bar to track how close a value is to a targeted goal.

Is there an Easy Excel Tool for Quick Data Analysis?

Yes! There are many tools that are both easy to use and effective for Excel data analysis. The hardest part is choosing which one best suits your needs!

Ideally, you want to find a tool that makes Excel analysis more efficient and you as a marketer more productive. After all, your time is very important and extremely limited.

If you can save time with faster, more efficient analysis, you can allocate these limited resources to other tasks.

Some tools promise to help you achieve deep, actionable insights from your Excel spreadsheets. However, complex interfaces or features with limited capabilities can severely detract from this promise.

How to use Quick Analysis in Excel

Many marketers have been excited about a new data analysis tool, only to find that it fell well short of their expectations. Not to mention, Excel is such a robust tool already that it is difficult to find a quick analysis tool that does a better job.

One area where Excel does miss the mark is in charting options.

As mentioned earlier, data varies and there are many different types and analysis options out there. It would help if you had an expansive library of charting options to handle this diversity.

Unfortunately, Excel has a glaring deficiency in charting choices, particularly when it comes to specialized options to visualize marketing data.

ChartExpo: A Quick Analysis Tool For Excel

Rather than waste your time with tools that fall short of expectations and only end up costing you money and frustration, you can take advantage of ChartExpo. This Excel add-in offers an entire library of charting options.

ChartExpo was designed with marketers and researchers in mind, but there are general analysis options that serve all types of data needs.

It is one of the best tools for visualizing your spreadsheets and identifying trends, patterns, correlations and other vital clues about what’s happening behind the numbers.

Your brain is much faster at acquiring visual clues than text or numbers. Thus, you’ll extract insights much faster than you would if the data stayed as a spreadsheet or table.

Data Visualization also make powerful presentations and reports. You may want to present data to team members, clients or other parties. Charts allow these individuals to understand the presented data and reach the same conclusions.

Again, it’s a matter of efficiency. Acquiring insights or presenting results very quickly means you have more time to put towards other tasks, like putting those insights into action!

ChartExpo also prides itself on a user-friendly interface. You don’t have to be an Excel wizard to use this tool and there is no coding required.

All you need to do is select the chart category and visualization type you wish to use and then enter the data into the respective categories.

After you’ve entered your different data dimensions and added in the metrics, press the Create Chart button and ChartExpo does the rest.

How to use Quick Analysis in Excel

How To Install ChartExpo In Excel

To get started with ChartExpo for Excel add-In, follow the simple and easy steps below.

  • Open your Excel desktop application (Excel 2013 with sp1) or later).
  • Open the worksheet and click on the Insert menu.
  • Click My Apps and then click on See All, as shown.

How to use Quick Analysis in Excel

  • Search for a ChartExpo add-in in my Apps Store.
  • Click on the Insert.

How to use Quick Analysis in Excel

  • The add-in will be added to the Excel application, as shown.

How to use Quick Analysis in Excel

  • Log in with your Microsoft account or create a new account.
  • Enter your newly created account and start using the ChartExpo add-in. You’re only required to log in for the first time. Next time, ChartExpo won’t ask for your details.

How to use Quick Analysis in Excel

  • Open your ChartExpo. By default you will see list view of charts.

How to use Quick Analysis in Excel

  • You will see a list of different types of charts categorized into 6 groups. You can expand any of these groups just by clicking on them.

Creating a Chart with ChartExpo

There are many different kinds of charts you can create with ChartExpo. To highlight how easy it is to use ChartExpo, here’s a step-by-step example of creating a Crosstab Chart.

The first thing you need to create a chart is a data set. This sample data shows traffic volumes based on social media platform and browser type. Perhaps you want to know which social media platforms are generating the most visitors for your website.

How to use Quick Analysis in Excel

You would take this website traffic data and enter it into three columns.

  1. Category (Social Media Platform)
  2. Subcategory (Browser)
  3. Numerical value (Traffic)

Let’s use the tabular data below for our scenario:

Social Media Platform Browser Traffic
Pinterest Chrome 41
Pinterest Safari 37
Pinterest Firefox 26
Pinterest Edge 15
Pinterest Android Webview 30
Slideshare Chrome 23
Slideshare Firefox 14
Slideshare Edge 7
Slideshare Android Webview 17
Twitter Chrome 57
Twitter Firefox 14
Twitter Safari 48
Twitter Android Webview 45
LinkedIn Chrome 52
LinkedIn Android Webview 14
LinkedIn Edge 10
LinkedIn Firefox 13
LinkedIn Safari 31
Quora Safari 20
Quora Edge 14
Quora Android Webview 20
Quora Chrome 46
Quora Firefox 11
Instagram Safari 26
Instagram Android Webview 26
Instagram Firefox 16
Instagram Chrome 27
Reddit Chrome 22
Reddit Android Webview 16
Reddit Safari 21
Reddit Firefox 16
Reddit Edge 3
Facebook Firefox 25
Facebook Safari 35
Facebook Chrome 69
Facebook Edge 13
Facebook Android Webview 38

After you fill in your spreadsheet, you need to draw the chart.

How to use Quick Analysis in Excel

How To Draw The Chart

Open ChartExpo by clicking on INSERT on the top menu bar. Click on , followed by clicking on ChartExpo for Excel.

How to use Quick Analysis in Excel

First, click on the General analysis category and then click on Crosstab Chart.

How to use Quick Analysis in Excel

When you click on Crosstab Chart after that make sure you select all the columns on which data need to be drawn and click on “Create Chart From Selection” Button. In our case we are selecting three column from the sheet.

How to use Quick Analysis in Excel

The chart is updated to reflect the data in your spreadsheet.

How to use Quick Analysis in Excel

How to use Quick Analysis in Excel

What Insights Does This Chart Give?

This chart is a great way to show off categories and subcategories.

For example, this chart shows that 18% of clicks came from Facebook. You can then go further with the category data and explore its subcategories of browser types.

In this case, you find that 38% of Facebook users used Google Chrome, 21% came from Android Webview, 19% from Safari and so on.

This chart provides useful insight into how customers interact with your site and social media content. At the same time, you can learn which social media platforms are worth marketing on to achieve the best results.

After identifying the best social media platforms to market on, you may follow up on this analysis with other charts. You can find the optimal times to post on social media with a dayparting chart.

Or, look at post topics to decide the most engaging keywords on each social media platform. You can also chart different types of posts to see which are most valuable, whether blog posts, images, videos, etc.

One analysis will lead to other questions and more profound discoveries!

Wrap Up

You need to ask thousands of questions before you can begin attracting new customers at a steady rate.

How do customers feel about your business now?

What problems are most commonly cited?

How are competitors approaching these audiences?

What makes you stand out?

Data is the universal key to answering all of these questions.

The role of data analysis is to extract all of the useful information from your raw data. Excel is one of the best tools to map, gather and model your data to extract high-value insights.

The more you understand your business data, the better your performance and the faster and more consistent your company will grow.

Excel is the all-around best tool for collecting, organizing, cleaning and processing your data.

The Quick Analysis tool for Excel helps you have easier access to many of the program’s most helpful features, from formatting options to creating charts and tables.

However, it doesn’t add any new value to Excel. For that, you need a tool like ChartExpo.

Data visualization is a crucial factor in today’s world. It allows for immediate comprehension of even your most complex data. Unfortunately, Excel falls short in this department.

With the help of ChartExpo, you can fix this shortcoming and capitalize on a library of PPC charts and other marketing and general analysis visualizations.

Tell the story of your data with impressive charts and instantly deepen your understanding of what’s happening.

How do I use the quick analysis tool to add data bars?

Quickly Create Data Bars You need to click on the quick analysis button and the formatting tab, and then select the “Data Bars” option. It will instantly add solid data bars (Blue) to the selected data.

How do you do a quick analysis?

You open the Quick Analysis Tool in Excel using a simple shortcut. You still need to select the data and then hold down the Control + Q keys. The shortcut works even if the tool is disabled. Another option is to right-click on the menu and select the Quick Analysis option.

How do I turn on quick analysis in Excel for Mac?

The Quick Analysis Tool is located in the upper-right corner of the Excel window, and it looks like a small button with a drop-down arrow. To use it, simply select the data you want to analyze, and then click the Quick Analysis button. A small window will appear with a variety of options for analyzing your data.

What is the benefit of using the Quick Analysis tool?

The Quick Analysis tool for Excel helps you have easier access to many of the program's most helpful features, from formatting options to creating charts and tables.