Athletes of exhilarating sports know it’s important to minimize accidents while maximizing fun. For instance, rock climbers use best-practice commands. It’s scuba diving best practice to log each dive upon completion.

To achieve the next level of certification or a technical certificate, divers must present a certain number of logged dives. Additionally, if a diver wants to dive multiple times a day, they must know the depth and duration of previous dives to calculate saturation levels in preparation for the next dive. Divers may also note equipment used and conditions (i.e. fresh or saltwater) to make it easier when planning another dive in similar conditions.

Plus, who wouldn’t want to visualize past dive sites and keep track of the places you hope to experience in the future?

View Dive Map in a full screen map

We added the World’s 10 Best Places for Scuba Diving to a spreadsheet, along with a few more for good measure. Let’s walk through how we made this dive map and how you could do the same with your own under-the-sea moments. It all starts with a simple spreadsheet.

Types of Dive Locations to Log in a Spreadsheet

Bring your dive logs into the 21st century with the help of a spreadsheet. Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets are both great tools to store your essential diving data. A spreadsheet version of a dive log allows you to do things you just can’t with pen and paper. To start, let’s go over the basic location-related headings you’ll need to create a dive log.

Dive site: Whether it’s Castle or Canibal Rock, you of course want to note the dive sites you visit. Keep track of these to avoid going to the same site twice or to ensure you remember your favorite site.

City, state, and country: Remove the confusion of two dive sites with the same name when you include the city, state, or country where the dive site is located. This is also crucial information needed for your dive map later on. If you want to get advanced you can map the latitude and longitude of your locations.

However you track your location, that’s just the start of what you can include in your dive log spreadsheet. So what additional information can we add?

More Spreadsheet Columns for Your Dive Map

Of course, there’s more to scuba diving than location. Other factors that affect the safety and logistics of your dives are a must to track. If you have to note them, you may as well make it easy with a spreadsheet. Some of the additional factors that could be column headings include:

• Dive number
• Date
• Entrytime
• Depth
• Duration
• Equipment (such as the thickness and type of wetsuit, etc.)
• Conditions (including water type)
• Fellow divers
• Where you’ve been & want to go
• Image
• Comments

Not only are you storing this key data in an organized way, but you’ll also be able to sort your dive map by several of these categories. Our mapping tool’s grouping feature allows you to sort the map by this extra info. See for yourself how useful grouping can be when you make your own dive map.

Map Your Scuba Dive Spreadsheet

Once you have your spreadsheet, input it into our mapping tool by following the steps below.

1. Open your spreadsheet
2. Select (Ctrl+A or Cmd+A) and copy (Ctrl+C or Cmd+C) your data
3. Open your web browser and navigate to batchgeo.com
4. Click on the location data box with the example data in it, then paste (Ctrl+V or Cmd+V) your own data
5. Check to make sure you have the proper location data columns available by clicking “Validate and Set Options”
6. Select the proper location column from each drop-down
7. Click “Make Map” and watch as the geocoder performs its process

The result is a dynamic custom map of your dive site locations. You can sort it based on the additional data from your spreadsheet and dive into the data within your map and share your experiences with others.

Share Your Dive Map With Friends & Fellow Divers

While a dive map for your own logging purposes is extremely useful, it’s even better when you can share it with friends and fellow scuba divers. Doing so is easy via a web or mobile device.

Share the link to your dynamic map with friends or embed it on your website so that the world can see all the dive sites you’ve visited (or want to visit). Yet, a scuba dive map isn’t the only map you can make with your data and share with your friends. For the less aquatically-inclined, a map of my location and favorite places applies to anyone who has ever left the house.

Spreadsheets are known to be one of the best places to store your data. But with large datasets, it can be difficult to identify trends in your information. To get to the real story behind your values, you need an easy way to narrow down what’s important. Enter Excel’s conditional formatting tool. We’ll cover what conditional formatting is and does, along with step-by-step instructions on how to implement it in your own spreadsheets:

• What Is Conditional Formatting?
• The 8 Conditional Formatting Rules Explained
  • Highlight Cell Rules
  • Top/Bottom Rules
  • Data Bars, Color Scales, & Icon Sets
  • New, Clear, & Manage Rules
• Maps Offer More Data Analysis

Let’s kick off this guide with a clear overview of this popular Excel tool.

What Is Conditional Formatting?

Let’s say you have a spreadsheet containing hundreds of cells of data. While each piece of information is important to the big picture, you might strain your eyes reading every single data point. You’re often just looking for specific numbers or textual info—say a range of the highest and/or lowest data.

In that case and many others like it, a way to zero in on the data that fits what you’re looking for would save time, keeping you focused on the information that matters. What better way than to specially format the desired cells to draw your attention? To ensure you continue to save time, this should be a fairly automatic process, which is exactly what conditional formatting does with its eight rules.

The 8 Conditional Formatting Rules Explained

Now that we better understand the purpose of conditional formatting, let’s jump into some of the various options or rules within the conditional formatting tool itself, including:

• Highlight Cell Rules
• Top/Bottom Rules
• Data Bars
• Color Scales
• Icon Sets
• New Rule
• Clear Rules
• Manage Rules

While we find ourselves reaching most often for the highlight and new (custom) rules, the others also have their specific uses, as we’ll identify.

Highlight Cell Rules

The first conditional formatting rule allows you to automatically highlight the data you specify. Whether that be numerical (for example, any data Greater Than the national average of 3.6 ICU beds per 10,000) or textual data, you’ll find an option that works for your information.

You can even use custom Excel formulas to determine the data to format. There are hundreds of TRUE or FALSE formulas ranging from basic to complex. To use this option:

1. Open your spreadsheet
2. Select the desired data column(s) you wish to manipulate within the sheet
3. Either navigate to menu Format and Conditional Formatting… or in the Home tab, click Conditional Formatting
4. Click Highlight Cell Rules

Highlight Cell Rules includes Excel’s easy way to find duplicates via Duplicate Values. For all of the above, you may choose to leave Excel’s default formatting settings (which determine the text and fill color for your highlight). Otherwise, you can opt for custom formatting.

Top/Bottom Rules

This second handy rule automatically formats the top or bottom range of your data. Whether that’s items, percentages, or averages is up to you. Unlike our Highlight Cell Rules example above, if you opt to go the average route, there’s no need to calculate nor input an average beforehand—let Excel do the math for you.

To get started with this rule, open your spreadsheet and select your desired data column(s). Then, either navigate to menu Format and Conditional Formatting… or in the Home tab, click Conditional Formatting and select for Top/Bottom Rules.

Data Bars, Color Scales, & Icon Sets

These three conditional formatting rules take data visualization to the next level. For example, with Data Bars, the longer the bar, the higher the value of the data. As with every option, you decide the formatting. In this specific case, choose between Gradient or Solid Fill for your data bars.

Instead of a bar, Color Scales assigns a color shade to a cell’s value. A 2 or 3-Color Scale corresponds to the minimum, midpoint, and maximum thresholds of your data.

Icon Sets, on the other hand, utilize icons to represent your data. Choose from directional icons like arrows, various shapes or other indicators, and rating icons. Then, designate icons for values greater than, less than, or equal to your data. To incorporate any of these visual effects in your sheets:

• Open your spreadsheet
• Select the desired data column(s)
• Either navigate to menu Format and Conditional Formatting… or in the Home tab, click Conditional Formatting
• Select your desired visual option

Choosing your bar, color scale, or icon is a pretty customized option. But for even more customization, you can create your own conditional formatting rules.

New, Clear, & Manage Rules

The final conditional formatting options allow you to easily add a new rule or modify the rules you’ve already set up. With Clear Rules, you have the choice to clear the entire sheet of rules or just certain cells you’ve selected.

When you Manage Rules, you’ll see a convenient list of everything you’ve set up in your spreadsheet. You can edit, change the rule order, or make a number of other modifications here. As the last of the conditional formatting options, let’s now see how else we can analyze data.

Maps Offer More Data Analysis

In addition to examining data with Excel’s tools, (you can check out our other Excel posts, like How to Find Duplicates in Excel and 5 Excel Tips From the Guy Who Built It, there are other ways to level up your data analysis. One such way is mapping. With a map of your location data, you get a visual element of data analysis (much like conditional formatting), though maps provide far more than a simple highlight, as you can see below.

View ICU beds by city in a full screen map

Visualize your data as markers on a custom map with multiple map marker colors, automatic grouping, and more. This gives you better insight into your data than if you’d left it in a spreadsheet. You can get started mapping your spreadsheets and check out all that comes with it at batchgeo.com.

Sports bring people together and it seems there’s always a season to keep up with, especially when it comes to basketball. Not only do the NCAA and NBA leagues draw massive crowds but the WNBA also has thousands of fans who flock to their games—especially the finals.

The WNBA Finals are a best-of-five series between the two semifinal winners held every October. We’ll take a look at WNBA finals history and which team has the most championship appearances. Plus, we can’t examine sports without talking about wins: the most and those that were oh-so-close on the map below.

View WNBA Champions in a full screen map

Wikipedia provided the open-source list of WNBA champions data for our map of women’s professional basketball championships. Explore the winners (and losers) geographically or by map groups like finals year or team’s current status. We’ll also highlight some trends below.

WNBA Championship History: Most Appearances

Though the league is only 12 active teams, there have been 15 WNBA teams that have played their way through the regular season to make it to the finals—regardless of winning or losing once they got there. The Minnesota Lynx and Los Angeles Sparks have appeared in more than five WNBA finals each. Between them, they’ve appeared 11 times, although just one of those was together. With six appearances, the Lynx have the Sparks’ five finals appearances beat. The only teams close to catching up to their record are the Detroit Shock (4), Houston Comets (4), Seattle Storm (4).

Both the Shock and the Comets are no longer in the league. The Shock relocated (first to Tulsa and later to Dallas where they were rebranded as the Wings) while the Comets folded altogether. Some other teams that were no stranger to the WNBA Finals before franchise changes include the Sacramento Monarchs and Charlotte Sting, both of which folded. The Connecticut Sun (formerly Orlando Miracle) and Las Vegas Aces (previously known as Utah Starzz, San Antonio Silver Stars, and San Antonio Stars) had faced relocations in the past.

But which teams haven’t been so lucky?

Zero Finals Appearances

As for the teams that have never once made it to the finals, there are only three. They’re all former teams, so unlikely to make a final in the future, unless the team is revived. These never-champs are:

• Cleveland Rockers
• Miami Sol
• Portland Fire

The Cleveland Rockers were one of the original teams. established at the same time as the league in 1997. Yet the Rockers never made it to the finals before the team folded in 2003. In the case of both the Miami Sol and the Portland Fire, each only had a two-year run (2000–2002), so their lack of finals appearances is easily explained. Let’s move on to wins.

WNBA Most Championships

As for wins, which is the goal for every team, nine teams have more than one championship under their belt:

• Houston Comets
• Minnesota Lynx
• Seattle Storm
• Detroit Shock
• Los Angeles Sparks
• Phoenix Mercury
• Indiana Fever
• Sacramento Monarchs
• Washington Mystics

Which team—or teams—truly hold the crown? The Houston Comets (folded), Minnesota Lynx, and Seattle Storm have the most finals wins of any WNBA team (four wins each). While the Comets’ last win was in 2000 (the team was dissolved after the 2008 season), Minnesota won as recently as 2017 and the Storm were the 2020 champs.

The next-most WNBA finals wins appear to come in threes: the Detroit Shock, Los Angeles Sparks, and Phoenix Mercury have three W’s on their record. Combined, the WNBA championship wins of the Indiana Fever, Sacramento Monarchs (which moved to Tulsa after 2009 and then Dallas following the 2015 season), and Washington Mystics also add up to three wins. Now let’s move on to the teams with a lot of wins and no losses.

WNBA Champions With A Winning Streak

While Minnesota, Houston, and Seattle have the same high number of finals wins (four each), they do differ in their winning percentage. Only the Comets and Storm have a perfect score, winning as often as they’ve appeared in the championships.

As the Minnesota Lynx has seen two finals losses, their winning percentage is quite a bit lower at 0.667. The teams with a better winning percentage than the Lynx? Both the Detroit Shock and Phoenix Mercury out-score the Lynx with 0.75 percent wins. Those that fall below the Lynx? The Los Angeles Sparks (0.6), Sacramento Monarchs (0.5), Washington Mystics (0.5), and Indiana Fever (0.333). But even a winning percent of 0.333 is better than 0.

No Win Teams

Several WNBA teams have made an appearance or two in the finals but have yet to win a title. These include:

• New York Liberty
• Atlanta Dream
• Connecticut Sun
• Las Vegas Aces
• Charlotte Sting
• Chicago Sky

The New York Liberty has had the most opportunities to bring home a trophy, yet they’re still 0 for 4 in championships. The two teams that flubbed three chances each to win are the Atlanta Dream and Connecticut Sun. As for the rest of the teams without a W, the Las Vegas Aces have had two chances while both the Charlotte Sting and Chicago Sky have had just one throughout WNBA finals history.

And there’s certainly not a lack of basketball leagues to support. To dive into other dribbling champs, check out NBA Finals on a Map: Most Appearances, Most Wins or map your favorite league’s stats at batchgeo.com.