The Michelle Pfeiffer of software, Microsoft Excel manages to remain sexy despite its age. The blog at Juice Analytics is ripe with clever ways to keep those spreadsheets looking good.

Several tips spread across three posts reveal clever ways to visualize data within spreadsheet cells. The first post covers showing bar graphs within cells. A follow-up post suggests variations on those graphs. A later post tackles a few types of charts preferred by famed information designer Edward Tufte.

The functions to create these effects also work in Google Spreadsheets and OpenOffice’s Calc with little or no modification.

Juice Analytic’s first bar graph article became popular last week when it was featured on Lifehacker and the inimitable Digg.com. I found it on the terrific infoporn data visualization blog, Information Aesthetics.

Those unfamiliar with Tufte can check out his website for information on his other books and his nationwide tour of courses. The courses are quite a good deal, because you get all four books as part of the fee. If you’re a student it’s even a sweeter deal. The price for students (currently $180) ends up being less that the price of the four books bought separately at full price ($185).