Could be, I'd love it if anyone else could confirm. For the record, I've tried to create graphs like these in Excel, and I've struggle getting them just right. So the question I have is whether it's just because I don't know Excel well enough, or whether I should be using other software.
Both. PowerPoint + Excel can do some pretty good charts. You need to put time & effort into custom themes to really make it work. Using custom themes keeps colors and styles consistent across charts and slides, with smarter defaults so you don’t have to make as many manual changes.
I’ve found it quickly breaks down when you push beyond the canned styles or try to apply them to more complex data (e.g. more than 5 categories). Then you have to move to something like Plotly.
As always, your data graphics are only as good as your data. Make sure you’re working from clean tables to ensure you don’t start making errors.
