Lightweight data exploration in Excel

"We often are given a chunk of data in Excel that we need to explore. Of course, the first tool you should pull out of your toolbox in cases like this is the trusty PivotTable (it slices, it dices!). But at times we have to dig a little deeper into the toolbox and pull out the in-cell bar chart."

http://www.juiceanalytics.com/writing/lightweight-data-exploration-in-excel/

[This technique also works on OpenOffice, Google Spreadsheets, etc]