First attempt at pushing the limits of Excel's visual design features

  • I'm not 100% sure if this is a good match for Hacker News but thought somebody here might appreciate it.

    Obviously I don't encourage the use of Excel for most data analytics projects, but I get so many client requests for Excel dashboards that I thought I should just make a standalone toolkit I could send to them. It's basically just a big 35mb+ Excel file with a ton of copy-pasteable charts/elements, color palettes, tips/tricks and other goodies. There's enough there for most use cases and it's easy enough for anyone with basic Excel skills to use.

    Feedback has been a funny mix of "holy moly is that really Excel, I want it!" and "this is too pretty and not practical".

    I've seen enough 90s style, clip-art packed, badly-laid-out Excel workbooks that I think there's room for something a bit more visually engaging especially if it adheres to the basic principles of data visualization.