Advice on how to present large amounts of data in a better way

[Exorcist1]

Hello there!
As I'm not an everyday user of Excel charts, I'm not the most skilled person to be creating charts in Excel. However, I'm facing writing an analysis at the moment, so illustrations would do well to accompany the text.
What I basically have is a dataset measuring labor productivity among other productivity ratios. Whatever the indicator, it consists of data from the past seven years (2007-2013). But most importantly, the data is distinguished regionally (four different regions) and the size of firm it represents (three size categories). So that's an 80+ dataset (see attachment).
What you'll also find in the file is a botched attempt at trying to display the data. Not a very representative chart, as you'll quickly realize! So anyone got any good ideas how to make the dynamics of regional tendencies more apparent? Ideally, it should help visualize the data year-on-year either by direct comparison of regions or the size of companies. Any way to do that?
I suppose I could leave out the years inbetween, but I really wouldn't want to do that as it's the changes that should stick out.

Sorry about the clumsiness! But find in yourself to help even the most dim-witted.

[oeldere]

Maybe like this?

[Exorcist1]

Cheers! That is much better indeed!
Though I still can't quite figure out where the data for one region's medium-sized and large enterprises has disappeared. But thanks for the effort!

Now if anyone still has some ideas, please do contribute! As I have many similar sets of data to prepare for the business report, I'm open to all ideas¡ Sorry I can't return the favor, folks!

[Exorcist1]

Maybe like this?

By the way, how come some of the data for the SE region has gone missing? No values displaying for small and middle-sized firms? smiley-confused002.gif

[oeldere]

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which one are missing?

[Andy Pope]

Check the source table Output!A1:D85.

The Region name at rows 12 and 13 are incorrect. I assume a simple copy/paste problem.

[Exorcist1]

Yeah, thanks for that. Got it.

By the way, how can data be resorted in a suitable way? I mean, here it can be sorted alphabetically and descending (small-medium-large) but in other cases (such as months) sorting alphabetically makes no sense at all. So how do you make data (such as months or anything that logically shouldn't be in alphabetical order) appear in a certain way? As Pivot tables seems to put all text in alphabetical order...

[oeldere]

use numbers instead of tekst. (e.g. 01, 02 ,03 etc).

Make sure you format it in 00.

[Andy Pope]

for more on custom sorts see,
http://www.contextures.com/excel-piv...tml#sortcustom