Using Bullet Charts in PowerPoint to Replace Gauges

Gauges and speedometers are widely used on any business and corporate dashboard however if you are looking for chart alternatives then the bullet charts are a good alternative to gauges.

Using Bullet Charts in PowerPoint to Replace Gauges

The advantage of using bullet charts to display information is that you only require a very little space compared with gauges and other meters or thermometer diagrams for presentations. This can be advantageous for slides when you need to show detailed information but do not have enough space to embed everything.

In PowerPoint you can insert vertical or horizontal bullet charts by entering percentages and numbers.

Bullet Chart is coined to Stephen Few. A bullet chart normally looks like a column chart within a column chart. It is a great visualization tool that can be used to compare compare 2 series of data together.

If you need to create executive dashboards in Excel or PowerPoint then you can use bullet charts to display key performance indicators (KPI). You can compare the actual performance with poor performance, the average performance or excellent performance levels in the same tiny bullet chart.

How to design a simple Bullet Chart in PowerPoint 2010

Now let’s see how to design a simple but effective bullet chart template for PowerPoint. You can download this free PPT template or create your own bullet chart design in PowerPoint.

Start inserting a chart template using the 100% stacked column chart.

bullet chart stacked chart template

Then, depending on the number of categories you want to add, remove or add new categories. The series will be used to display Poor, Average, Excellent sections.

bullet charts powerpoint

Then, you can add an arrow shape above the stacked chart to represent the bullet chart to any desired value. You can add a transparency level to the shape to make it semi-translucent.  Here is a simple of a slide using the bullet chart template in PowerPoint.

bullet chart

You can use this concept to represent a data in any enterprise dashboard or PowerPoint presentation or you can alternatively download this dashboard toolkit for PowerPoint presentations with stunning dashboard slides and elements.

Bullet Chart PowerPoint (1375 downloads)

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