As I mentioned in my original post, Exploring Excel 2013 as Microsoft’s BI Client, I will be posting tips regularly about using Excel 2013 and later.  Much of the content will be a result of my daily interactions with business users and other BI devs.  In order to not forget what I learn or discover, I write it down … here.  I hope you too will discover something new you can use.  Enjoy!

Annoyed by the Buttons, Remove Them

This is one of my shortest tips, but many users who are new to Excel charts look to remove the field buttons on the charts. See the image below to see what we are talking about.

It is really simple to hide them or turn them off. You can manage the field buttons on the ANALYZE tab on the POWERCHART TOOLS. If you want to turn all the buttons off, you only need to click the Field Buttons button which will look “unselected” and all the buttons are gone. If you want to remove only some of the buttons, expand the selection on the button and select or deselect what you want to see. (Although I am not a fan of buttons in dashboards because they are ugly.)

Here is the same chart without buttons. Be sure when you are designing your dashboards, you turn the buttons off so you can see how the chart looks for deployment. Buttons take up a lot of real estate in the chart. When they are removed your chart could look very different.

Chart Filter Buttons

One use case that I want to highlight is using filters on chart. When you add a filter for your chart, you need to use a field button to interact with the filter. The nice part about hiding the buttons and deploying to Excel Services, you can apply an underlying, hidden filter. However, if you want to change the filtered option you need to unhide the field buttons. If you want users to apply filters, you should use slicers not the filter option. Slicers are a much better user experience.