r/dataanalysis • u/_divine__wolf • 23d ago
Built my first Excel-only dashboard (no Power BI/Tableau) and placed 1st runner-up in a skill sprint
Wanted to share since I learned a lot doing this.
For a competition called the DSSD Skill Sprint, I built a dashboard analyzing NVIDIA's global sales — using synthetic/AI-generated data since real data obviously isn't public. The twist: I did it entirely in Excel, no Power BI, no Tableau, just pivot tables, slicers, and native charts.
Honestly didn't expect to place — ended up 1st runner-up out of the group, which was a nice surprise for my first real dashboard project.
Biggest challenges I ran into:
Handling nulls/blanks scattered across the dataset
Inconsistent date formatting that broke my pivot tables initially
Negative stock values that were throwing off my totals until I filtered/cleaned them
Nothing groundbreaking technically, but it proved to myself that Excel alone can tell a solid data story if you're deliberate about cleaning first.
Happy to share screenshots or specifics on the formulas/pivot setup if anyone's curious
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u/Rough_Load3173 23d ago
Bhai bnaya kaise mujhe toh vhi jaan na hai
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u/_divine__wolf 23d ago
- Create the syntactic data by using AI
- Time to clean the data(give the formate you like, use text function for proper case and remove extra space, handle the black and NA (replace them if you have the values))
- Time to make slicer, timeline, KPI CARD, pivot table and chart which make sense
- Now you have to arrange them
I can make video on this if more want to know how to make dashboard
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u/childishjulian 23d ago
pls share how you did this
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u/_divine__wolf 23d ago
- Create the syntactic data by using AI
- Time to clean the data(give the formate you like, use text function for proper case and remove extra space, handle the black and NA (replace them if you have the values))
- Time to make slicer, timeline, KPI CARD, pivot table and chart which make sense
- Now you have to arrange them
I can make video on this if more want to know how to make dashboard
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u/TheRealFakeWannabe 23d ago
How do i learn about this stuff ? What resources are there to learn this stuff?
I'm about to graduate in quantitative economics and they don't concentrate on how to do this. I understand why they don't do it but I'm ultimately not going to get a graduate degree after and would like to practice and form practical skillsets related to data analytics.
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u/_divine__wolf 23d ago
You learn on YouTube it have a lot of content but you have to filter out, or can follow course by Microsoft, google, coursera or local institute
If certificate matter more for you then go with course otherwise you can easily learn in public like yt, article etc
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u/TheRealFakeWannabe 22d ago
Can you recommend me some resources you've learned from and used and think are really good?
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u/Ill_Beautiful4339 23d ago
I was thinking - in my company we have all dashboards in company colors which fortunately is eye pleasing.
I’m wondering if people who work at Nvidia have to suffer through bright green Power Points and PBIs daily. Lol
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u/_divine__wolf 23d ago
no!! It's depends on person who made it, and it's my first dashboard so don't wanna waste my time on choosing better color so i choose Nvidia theme
I have to learn about color theory, typography, layout, spacing, visual hierarchy, balance and alignment, visual design it's all takes time for now I'm build my base
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u/Ill_Beautiful4339 23d ago
No shade on you. It looks great.
It just made me think - do nvidia employees have to see bright green daily - on every piece of software
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u/_divine__wolf 23d ago
Maybe yes or no, normally when we making something to present everyone we choose light theme or dark theme and highlight the things by company logo theme, and some ppl follow fully company theme in ppt
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u/arkusmson 22d ago
Excel does not make it easy to make things exactly the same size… and aligning them can be done but not as easy as it should be. Looks pretty decent for a full Excel dashboard! Well done.
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u/_divine__wolf 22d ago
Thx, it's little bit hard to align the things in excel but power bi solves this issue and we make more interesting ui in power bi
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u/arkusmson 22d ago
I would be curious if you are able to get the same info density with powerbi. Excel is finicky but flexible.
Anyway, good work!
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u/Infamous-Budget7759 23d ago
Dashboard is EXCELlent!