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Small multiples charts (also known as trellis charts or panel charts) are a great way to visualize trends across different categories while maintaining consistency. They display multiple variations of the same chart, often sharing a common axis, which allows for easier comparison across groups.

While effective, these charts can suffer from poor readability if titles are not thoughtfully applied. Let’s look at some ways to enhance labels for better clarity and user experience.

A different way to make drill down possible/usable in a small sheet.

Sometimes you don’t have all the space to do what you want.

Or you are almost finished with a dashboard, and suddenly someone mentions: “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could drill down on this chart…” – but the sheet is just too small for another column. There are multiple ways so solve this issue – each with its own pros and cons. Viz-in tooltip (hard to read on larger drill-downs), hiding nearby sheets (tedious), enlarging the row-height (ugly when not drilled-down), misusing totals (even uglier), …

In this article I describe a different solution – which definitely has its disadvantages, but can be useful in certain situations where the drill down functionality is important.