True Colors: Optimizing Charts for Readers with Color Vision Deficiencies

Hey, would you take a look at this chart and let me know what you think? I am particularly concerned about the sales figures I marked in red.

Chart filtered for red green color blindness. All colors appear murky green and indestinguishable

Don’t adjust your screen. You are viewing this chart through a filter that simulates the most common type of color blindness. We often have the best intentions when we try to draw attention to an element in a chart by marking it red, or by contrast to show that all is well by marking something green…  But trust me, this is the sort of thing that can ruin someone else’s day, and it is so easy to fix.

About Color Blindness

According to the NIH, color blindness or color deficiency affects around 8% of the male population and 0.5% of the female population. This means that, if your document will be viewed by 1000 people, around 45 of them will have some form of color deficiency. If you are sending it across campus, this could easily translate to several hundred people who will be affected.

It is worth noting that color deficiency is a spectrum; people can have mild to severe forms of color blindness, and not all forms of color blindness involve the same colors. The most common type of color blindness involves deficiencies in discerning the colors red and green.

A common misconception among those who are not color blind is that if someone has red/green color blindness, they only have trouble with the colors red and green. However, these deficiencies can easily affect other colors as well; for instance, maroon and brown can look identical to people with red/green color deficiencies… after all, maroon is just brown with a touch of red. In other words, it is not just the colors red and green themselves, but also those colors within other colors. It’s like an inception of color… (I still don’t understand that movie).

Troublesome Charts

Let’s take a look at a couple examples… (Disclaimer: both charts are created with entirely fictional data for purposes of illustration of chart features).

Pie chart using purple and blue to distinguish

At first glance, this chart looks great! I think I am clearly demonstrating that so many students (95%!) are happy on campus. But let’s run this through a red/green color blindness simulator…

Same chart filtered for red green color blindness: all appears purple

Wait. What is going on?? How many students are happy? Who is unhappy? Someone is 95%, but which one?

Let’s look at another.

Schools distinguished by red and green lines

We think we did a good job of drawing attention to Anthopology’s interest numbers by marking them in red…. But here is how the same chart filtered for red/green color blindness:

Same chart filtered for red/green, all lines appear green

Oh man. Maybe we didn’t do such a good job…

What You Can Do

  1. Never Use Color Alone to Convey Meaning

“Wait, are you saying I can’t use color anymore?” Of course you can! But don’t make color the only way someone can discern what is going on.

Think about incorporating labels, tables and textures in your charts (see below for some examples).

  1. Use Color Blindness Simulators to Test Documents

There are several simulators available online to help you do a final check on images or charts in your document. Here are a couple I have been using:

  • Color Oracle: This site has a free download that allows you to filter your entire screen with a couple clicks, and see how different documents would look with different types of color impairment.
  • Coblis: Color blindness simulator: upload an image to this site to see how it would look for different types of color impairments. For charts, you may have to take a screen shot so you will have an image to upload.
  • Windows 10: the settings of Windows 10 also has a color blindness simulator in settings. Go to Settings and search for Color Filter to find it.Windows 10 settings
  1. Utilize Monochromatic Color Sets

If there are only a few variables in a chart, contrast can be helpful. Regardless of a color that is perceived, gradations in color can almost always be detectable to your viewers. Monochromatic palettes consist of the same color with different gradations of lightness or darkness. See below for an example with a pie chart.

  1. Color Blind Friendly Palettes

If you are feeling fancy, there are some tried and true color-blind friendly palettes out there. Just make sure you are still not conveying meaning with color alone, because no palette can address all types of color blindness. Here is a page with some cool options, and interesting general information: Color Friendly Palettes

Exercise File

If you would like a challenge, try fixing some of the Charts in this exercise file. There are two sheets in the workbook with problematic charts and two sheets with possible solutions. That being said, there are many ways you could solve the puzzle of making these charts more accessible.

OfficeBytesColorExercise

Let’s Fix Those Charts!

If I went through all the ins and outs of chart creation, this would be much more than a byte, so please do come to my Pivot Tables, Charts and Pictures training if you get really stumped (or attend anyway, because it is a blast!)

Below is a summary of how I approached fixing the problem charts.

Chart 1

Chart 1 was this guy:

Pie chart using purple and blue to distinguish

I did two things to this chart:

  1. Utilized a monochromatic color set
  2. Added data labels

The result is conveying the same information, but the look is a bit different.

Pie chart now monochomatic yellow with labels

Running this chart through the red/green color blindness simulator (or even converting it to greyscale) it is still understandable.

Pie Chart looks mostly the smae with filter

Below are the steps I took.

Monochromatic Color

  1. Click on the chart to select it.
  2. Press the paintbrush button on the right side of the chart to access Style and Color options.
  3. Select color.
  4. Select a monochromatic color set (I picked yellow).
    Steps 1 through 4 illustrated

Data labels

  1. Click on the chart to select it.
  2. Press the + button on the right side of the chart for Chart Elements.
  3. Check the box next to Data Labels.
    • Don’t forget you can press the arrow to the right of Data Labels to access more options, like the location and appearance of the labels.Data Labels

Chart 2

Chart 2 was the fictional subject interest chart:

Schools distinguished by red and green lines

To fix this chart,  I added two things:

  1. Data labels  (see above)
  2. Data table at the bottom of the chart.

Line Chart now has labels and a table underneath

Though I didn’t change the colors, running this through a red/green color blindness simulator I can tell that people can perceive the difference between the lines with their labels; and as a backup, they could reference the table underneath.

Chart now understandable even though colors are all green

I covered data labels in the previous example.  Below is how you can insert a data table.

Data Tables

  1. Click on the chart to select it.
  2. Press the + button on the right side of the chart for Chart Elements.
  3. Check the box next to Data Table. Don’t forget you can always click on the arrow to the right of any of the chart elements to see more options.

Data Table

Tell Me About Your Experiences

What do you think? Did you approach correcting the charts differently than I did? Are you someone who has a color deficiency? Have you torn out your hair trying to read certain charts, and if so, do you have other suggestions that we, the chart makers, can do to improve? I would love for you to weigh in with your thoughts!

Congratulations, Power Users!

Congratulations to our newest Power Users! For the full gallery, and more information about the WSU Microsoft Office Power User Program, please visit: wichita.edu/poweruser

  • Johny Buchanan-Spachek

Johny Buchanan-Spachek

Excel: Form Entry for Tables

A lot of people prefer a form entry view to a table view for data entry. Forms for data entry are something we are all used to seeing in popular programs like Filemaker and Access, but also for something as basic as filling out an online form… that is data entry too, after all.

There are ways to accomplish this task with macros, but there is an even simpler way to activate a new view involving Tables.

Exercise File

If you would like to follow along, download the exercise file here:

ExerciseFormEntry

This looks familiar if you have attended Advanced Formulas training. We use this same data to calculate age from birthday and grade from a grade percent. Notice that columns E, G and H all contain formulas, while the other columns are free entry.

Important: Format as a Table

This data has been formatted as a Table. We talk about tables at great length in Excel Essentials. Remember how I said there are endlessly cool things that will happen in your life when you format data as a table? Here is another one!

Creating a Form Button

Form entry is not a command you can find in the ribbon, but there is a work around for this. You might recall that the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) contains all the commands you can find on the ribbon and also commands not in the ribbon… let’s find this one.

  1. Find the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) above the ribbon.
  2. Select the dropdown arrow at the right side of the QAT.QAT Dropdown
  3. Select More Commands.QAT More Commands
  4. On the Choose Commands From dropdown, select Commands not in the Ribbon.Commands Not in Ribbon
  5. On the left pane, scroll down and select Form (features are listed alphabetically).
  6. Press the Add button between the two panes.
  7. Form will appear on the right pane.
  8. Press OKSteps 5 through 8 illustated

A new button will appear in your QAT for Form entry.

New button in QAT

Using the New Button

Let’s test out the button.

  1. Place your cursor anywhere inside the table.
  2. Press the Form button you just created in your QAT.
    New button in QAT
  3. A form entry box will appear.

Form Entry box

New: Adding Entries
  1. On the right side of the form view, press New
    New Button
  2. Enter in your own information (give yourself a good grade!)
  3. Notice how the columns that contain formulas (E, G and H) are not enterable.
  4. Tab to move between fields
  5. Press enter once data is entered.
  6. Scroll down to look at the new entry in the table.

 

Criteria:  Search for a Specific Field
  1. On the right side of the form view, press Criteria.Criteria Button
  2. Place your cursor in the Last Name field and try searching for Last Name: Green
  3. Press Find Next to be taken to the next entry.Find Next Button

Possible Pitfalls

  • If you are sharing a workbook with a group of people who would like to do form entry on your table, they will need to add the Form tool to their QAT too. They will still be able to type into the table without the form view, of course.

Thoughts?

What do you think? Do you have any old tables lying around that could use this handy feature?

Congratulations, Power Users!

Congratulations to our newest Power Users! For the full gallery, and more information about the WSU Microsoft Office Power User Program, please visit: wichita.edu/poweruser

  • Hannah BatesHannah Bates

Excel: Paste Special Operations: Quick Arithmetic with a Range Cells

Every once in a while, you find yourself in a situation where you need to perform a basic arithmetic function on a series of cells… maybe you need to take a group of cells and increase or decrease their number by 1, or by a percentage.

You could create a helper column, write a formula into it, auto fill down, then copy and paste the values back into their original spots, but that is a lot of steps for simple addition! You might be tempted to change the values by hand; adding one to each cell is not so hard, right? Well, don’t! There is an even faster way.

I have mentioned before that there is more than meets the eye in Paste Special options. Here is another great example.

Exercise File

To follow along, download today’s exercise here: ExercisePasteSpecialAddition

Scenario

This workbook contains a sheet called Attendance. In this scenario, my supervisor has asked that I add myself and him/her to the staff headcount at the January meetings. So, I would like to quickly add 2 to all the numbers in column B.

Paste Special: Operations

Since we will be using copy and paste for this, we need to have the number we want to add somewhere on the sheet so it can be copied. You can always delete it later: I populated this number in cell F1 for us.

  1. Select F1
  2. Either press Ctrl C on your keyboard or right click, copyF1 Selected, Copy
  3. Select all the cells that need this figure added: so B2 to B28
  4. In the Clipboard group of the Home tab, select the dropdown under Paste
  5. Select Paste SpecialPaste dropdown, Paste Special selected
  6. In the popup screen, under Operation, select Add.Operations section, Add selected
    • By doing this, we are telling Excel that, instead of copying the number 2 to all these cells, we would like to add 2 to the existing contents.
  7. All the numbers in the selected cells have now increased by 2.New list, with numbers increased by 2Once you have finished this task, you could theoretically delete the contents of E1 and F1. We did not create formulas in column B, we just added to the existing number, so we are no longer relying on F1.

    More Arithmetic Options

    Did you spy the other options in the Operations section of Paste Special? You could also:

    • Multiply
    • Divide
    • Subtract

Operations section of Paste Special

Congratulations, Power Users!

Congratulations to our newest Power Users! For the full gallery, and more information about the WSU Microsoft Office Power User Program, please visit: wichita.edu/poweruser

  • Lana Anthis
    Lansa Anthis
  • Cindy Sharp
    Cindy Sharp
  • Susie Steinbach

Susie Steinbach

Accessibility Checker

How accessible are your documents? Do you know how to check? Do you know it is easy and not scary at all? I promise.  Let’s run an accessibility check a document.

Exercise File

To follow along, download today’s exercise here: ExerciseDocCheckAccessibility

This document looks familiar if you have attended a Word Essentials training session; it is a final draft document from our Summer Camp Exercise. While this is a Word document, the good news is the checker will work the same in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint; so once you have learned it in one program, you have learned it in all of them.

Checking Accessibility

To check accessibility on this document:

On a PC:

  1. Go to File
  2. Select the Check for Issues dropdown
  3. Select Check Accessibility

Backstage View: Check for issues, check accessibility

On a Mac:

  1. Go to Tools
  2. Select Check Accessibility

Tools, check accessibility

  • Depending on your version of Microsoft, you may see the Accessibility Checker make an appearance in other views and tabs in the ribbon. Go for it! Microsoft is great about putting features in multiple locations, making them easier to find.

The Results

Once you select the Accessibility Checker, the results will appear on the right. It looks like my checker has found a few errors and a warning…. Some missing Alt Text and some repeated blank characters. What does this mean?

Accessibility Checker Results Pane

Classifications

Microsoft separates these results into three classifications:

  • Error. Content that makes the document difficult or impossible to read and understand for people with disabilities
  • Warning. Content that in most (but not all) cases makes the document difficult to understand for people with disabilities
  • Tip. Content that people with disabilities can understand but that could be presented in a different way to improve the user’s experience

Quick note, depending on your version of Microsoft, your checker may find different results than mine, so don’t be alarmed if your screen looks different. These checkers are constantly being developed and improved upon… the good news is, things are only getting better and more user friendly!

More Information About Errors and Warnings

For even more information, click on one of the errors, and look at the scrolling pane underneath the errors, titled Additional Information. Included in this pane is a Why Fix section with detailed explanations.

I can see, for instance, that my blank characters, which seem innocuous to me, could be very irritating to somebody accessing my document with a screen reader. I might be better off removing some of them or replacing them with a page break, if that is what I am really hoping to accomplish.

Accessibility Checker Errors

What is Alt Text? This is one you will see quite frequently. Alt text stands for Alternative Text. Screen readers will read alternative text aloud to your readers. So, think about the times you have created a document and conveyed a thought with an image rather than text; somebody accessing your document with a screen reader might want in on some of that knowledge so they can understand what is going on.

How to Fix

You probably know how to get rid of blank spaces mentioned above, but are you unsure how to fix problems like Alt Text?

It is worth reiterating that solutions are only getting simpler: if you are using Microsoft Office 365, the newest version of MS Office, Alt Text is accessible on a right click menu.

Edit Alt Text in right click menu in Office 365

That being said, most of us on campus are using Office 2016 or 2013, where Alt Text is absent from a right click option.

Microsoft does offer some guidance for How to fix each error:

  1. In the Accessibility Checker results pane, select the alt text error.
  2. In the same scrolling pane underneath the errors where we found why to fix the errors (above) is a subsection called Steps to Fix (you may have to use the scroll bar to see it).

Accessibility Checker: Steps to fix

These instructions are quite helpful, though I have found that they are more accurate for those using 2016 or earlier versions of Microsoft Office, where Alt Text is harder to find.

It looks like my instructions (For MS Office 2016) are telling me to:

  1. Right click on the image
  2. Select Format PictureRIght click menu, format picture
  3. Select Layout and Properties icon (looks like a four-headed arrow)
  4. Then enter Alt Text: How would you describe this picture to someone?Alt Text Screen in Word

More about Accessibility

There is so much more to say about this topic, but I will leave you with a couple more thoughts:

Styles

An excellent way to make your document accessible and utilize many more fabulous features in Microsoft products is by making use of the Styles. We cover styles at great length in Word Essentials training… I hope you are using them! More on these later…

Word Styles

Instructional Design and Access

Instructional Design and Access is the ultimate resource on campus for accessibility in documents. They offer numerous training sessions and excellent guidance. They can be reached at IDA@wichita.edu

Don’t miss their Blackboard and Accessibility Lab in the C-Space in the library every Tuesday and Wednesday from 1:00 to 3:00.

Congratulations, Power Users!

Congratulations to our newest Power Users! For the full gallery, and more information about the WSU Microsoft Office Power User Program, please visit: wichita.edu/poweruser

  • Betsy Main

Betsy Main

  • Karen Rogers

Karen Rogers

Excel: Transpose

“Show me a person who likes HLOOKUP and I will show you a person who doesn’t know about transpose in Excel,” quipped Mr. Excel (Bill Jelen) at Excelapalooza last fall.

Indeed, so many people are crazy about the VLOOKUP function, but you rarely hear anyone talk about VLOOKUP’s less popular cousin HLOOKUP.  This is partially because people tend to orient their spreadsheets vertically (as they should!). But also because, in the rare instance of a horizontally oriented list, the transpose feature in Excel has you covered. Transpose will allow you to turn a horizontally oriented list into a vertically oriented list, or vice versa.

“Why haven’t I seen this transpose button?”

Well, it is not a button per se… (but it should be!). Excel has packed some sneaky features into their paste options. This is just one of them (more on this later).

Exercise File

If you would like to follow along, download today’s exercise here: TransposeExercise

On this sheet is a list of letter grades and GPAs. It is horizontally oriented, and I would prefer to see it vertically displayed.

Horizontally Oriented List

Transpose: Paste Special

  1. Select cells D1 through P2 (all the data).
  2. Copy the data to your clipboard, either by pressing ctrl C or right click, Copy.
  3. Select cell A1. This is the beginning of where you will paste your data.
  4. In the Clipboard group of the Home tab, select the Paste dropdown.
  5. Select Paste Special.Paste Special Dropdown
  6. Check the box next to Transpose and press OK.

Transpose Box in Paste Special Menu

And there is your data, now vertically oriented!

Horizontal list now vertical

It is worth reiterating that this is just the beginning of paste options in Excel. More on this at a later date…

I hope this feature saves you some time and frustration with horizontally oriented lists. Sometimes it is these small but mighty hidden check boxes in Excel that make all the difference!

 

Congratulations, New Power Users!

  • Sandy Parker

Sandy Parker

Excel: The Name Box and Named Ranges

The Name Box

Most of us don’t give a lot of thought to the humble Name Box in Excel. We glance up at it occasionally to see which cell we have selected, but few people realize that there is a lot more than meets the eye with this feature.

Excel Name Box

Did you know you that this little box allows you to name a cell or range of cells? I could even rename a cell after myself.

Name in Name Box

You will be shocked to hear how easy this is… all I did was type over the cell name in the name box and suddenly “A1” became “Ali”.

Exercise Download

Let’s see how this works with a range of cells. For this, follow along with this document: NamedRangesExercise .

This data will look familiar to those of you who have taken Excel Essentials. It is a list of fictional employees, departments and salaries.

…By the way, you might find it useful to resize the name box for today’s exercise. This can easily be done by hovering your mouse to the right of the name box until you see a double headed arrow. Then simply click and drag.

Double headed arrow to resize name box

Named Ranges

I would like to name the Salary data so I can easily find and select it.

  1. Select Cells E1 through E22
    • Remember: to select a cell in Excel you hover your mouse over the first cell, and you are looking for your cursor to turn into a white cross for Excel to select it. Then click, hold down the mouse and drag down to the bottom of the list.

Selected Salary column data

 

  1. In the Name Box click over the existing cell name (in this case, E1),

Name Box

  1. Then replace it with the word Salary and press enter.

Name Box Renamed

Click onto any other cell to deselect the range.

  1. Notice there is now a dropdown that appears in the name box now with your newly created Salary moniker.
    • Test it out! Select it from the dropdown… it should select your entire range.

Name Box Dropdown

Named ranges allow users to quickly find and select a range of cells. Guess what else named ranges help you do? Formulas!

Formulas with Named Ranges

I would like to quickly figure out a 10% bonus for my employees based on the Salary range.

  1.  In F2, type = Salary*.1
  • Before you even finish typing salary, you will probably see something like this.

Formula with named range

  • Press Tab to accept the range or select it with your mouse.
  1. The end formula looks something like this:

Formula complete

  1. Then use AutoFill to take that formula down to the bottom of the list.
    • Remember the trick we talked about in Advanced Formulas for a quick AutoFill? Hover your cursor in the lower right until you see a black plus sign, then double click to carry the formula down.

Auto Fill

Managing Named Ranges

Inevitably, someday you will want to manage your named ranges. They live in the Formulas tab, in a button titled Name Manager.

Name Manager

Select Name Manager to see your full list of named ranges, alter, or delete them.

Name Manager Menu

 

Have you thought of a way you will use Named Ranges? Tell me about it!

 

Excel Text Formulas

We usually think about formulas in Excel in terms of numbers, but there are also a handful of formulas and functions for text.  The good news is, these functions are not only incredibly useful, they also happen to be user friendly! (we are looking at  you, complicated nested IF formulas)

Perhaps you have inherited a list of names in all lower case or all caps that you want to return to proper case… or vice versa, the list is in proper case and you long for a list in all caps (no judgement). Here is a quick way to transform that list in to the text case you want.

Follow along with the attached document NameList.

Let’s do Proper Case first as our template:

  1. Click into cell B2
  2. In the Formulas Tab, Click on the “Text” Function buttonText Button
  3. From the drop down list, select PROPER.
    Proper Command
  4. In the Function Arguments Box, Click in the white space next to text.Function Arguments
  5. Click on Cell A2 (or type A2)
  6. Click OK
  7. Double click on the autofill handle to carry the formula all the way down.

Autofill Handle

Nifty!

Results

Now try lower and upper case.  Follow the same instructions, but instead use the Text formulas for LOWER and UPPER in cells C2 and D2 respectively.

New Power Users:

Congratulations to the newest WSU Microsoft Office Power Users!

  • Ellen Abbey
  • Ross Powell

See the full gallery at wichita.edu/poweruser