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How to Create a Mobile App Dashboard in Excel with ChatGPT

Cody Schneider•

You don't need a complex business intelligence tool to understand your mobile app's performance. You can build a surprisingly powerful and interactive dashboard right in Excel, and you can use ChatGPT to make the entire process faster and easier. This guide will walk you through, step-by-step, how to go from raw data exports to a finished dashboard that tracks your most important app metrics.

First, Why Build a Mobile App Dashboard in Excel?

While dedicated BI tools are powerful, sometimes a solution in Excel is the most practical choice. It's accessible, flexible, and most teams already know how to use it. An Excel dashboard centralizes your key performance indicators (KPIs) in one place, giving you a clear snapshot of your app's health.

We'll focus on tracking the essential metrics every app developer or marketer cares about:

  • Acquisition: How many new users are you getting (e.g., Downloads)

  • Engagement: How active are your users (e.g., Daily Active Users, DAU/MAU ratio)

  • Retention: Are your users coming back over time?

  • Monetization: How are you making money (e.g., In-App Purchases, Ad Revenue)

Step 1: Get Your Mobile App Data

Your first task is to gather the raw material for your dashboard. Your app data is likely spread across a few different platforms. The two main sources are Apple's App Store Connect for iOS apps and the Google Play Console for Android apps. You might also use third-party analytics platforms like Firebase, Amplitude, or Mixpanel for more granular user behavior data.

You'll need to export your data from these sources, typically as a CSV or Excel file. For this tutorial, let’s assume you've combined your exports into a single spreadsheet with headers like these:

  • Date: The day the data was recorded (e.g., 2023-10-26)

  • Platform: iOS or Android

  • Country: The user's country

  • Downloads: Number of new downloads

  • DAU: Daily Active Users

  • MAU: Monthly Active Users

  • Avg Session Duration (sec): Average session length in seconds

  • In-App Purchases ($): Revenue from IAPs

  • Ad Revenue ($): Revenue from ads

Make sure your data is in a proper Excel Table. Just click anywhere in your data set and press Ctrl + T (or Cmd + T on Mac). This makes formulas and charts much easier to manage.

Step 2: Use ChatGPT to Clean and Prep Your Data

Raw data exports are rarely perfect. You often need to create new columns, reformat data, or calculate combined metrics. This is a perfect task for ChatGPT. Instead of hunting for the right Excel formulas, you can just describe what you want to do.

For example, you might want to calculate total revenue, find your app's "stickiness" ratio, or format dates. Let's create a few helper columns.

Calculating Total Revenue

You can ask ChatGPT for the formula to combine your two revenue streams.

Your ChatGPT Prompt: "In my Excel table named 'Table1', I have a column called 'In-App Purchases ($)' and another called 'Ad Revenue ($)'. Give me the formula to create a new column called 'Total Revenue' that sums them up."

ChatGPT will likely give you a clear, structured formula. Because you're using an Excel Table, it will use structured references, which are easier to read.

=[@[In-App Purchases ($)]]+[@[Ad Revenue ($)]]

Simply add a new column to your table called "Total Revenue" and paste this formula in the first cell. Excel will automatically apply it to the entire column.

Calculating the DAU/MAU Stickiness Ratio

The DAU/MAU ratio is a popular metric for measuring user engagement. A higher percentage suggests users are returning more frequently. This is another simple calculation you can get from ChatGPT.

Your ChatGPT Prompt: "I need to calculate my app's stickiness. Give me the Excel formula for a new column 'DAU/MAU Ratio' that divides the 'DAU' column by the 'MAU' column in 'Table1'."

The Formula: =[@DAU]/[@MAU]

Add a new column, paste in the formula, and format the column as a percentage.

Extracting the Month from a Date

Often, you want to analyze trends on a month-by-month basis, not daily. ChatGPT can help you create a column for this.

Your ChatGPT Prompt: "My 'Date' column in Excel is formatted as YYYY-MM-DD. I need a new column 'Month' that just shows the abbreviated month and year, like 'Oct-23'. What formula should I use?"

The Formula: =TEXT([@Date], "mmm-yy")

Step 3: Design Your Dashboard Structure

Stay organized by using separate tabs (sheets) in your Excel file. This workflow keeps your raw data, calculations, and final dashboard cleanly separated.

  • Raw_Data: This is where your exported and cleaned table lives. Don't touch this sheet after the initial setup.

  • Calculations: This is a helper sheet for your PivotTables. All the data that powers your charts will live here. This keeps the backend hidden from the final view.

  • Dashboard: This is the final, user-facing sheet. It will contain only your charts, KPIs, and interactive filters. Make it clean and easy to read.

Step 4: Create PivotTables to Summarize Your Data

PivotTables are the engine of your dashboard. They do the heavy lifting of summarizing thousands of rows of data into a format that's ready for visualization. This might sound intimidating, but ChatGPT can walk you through it.

Let's create a PivotTable to summarize monthly downloads by platform (iOS vs. Android).

Your ChatGPT Prompt: "Give me step-by-step instructions to create an Excel PivotTable from my data table. I want to show the sum of 'Downloads' by 'Month', with 'Platform' as the main column categories."

ChatGPT will guide you with steps like these:

  1. Navigate to your Raw_Data sheet.

  2. Select your data table. Go to the Insert tab and click PivotTable.

  3. Choose "Existing Worksheet" and select a cell in your Calculations sheet. Click OK.

  4. In the "PivotTable Fields" pane, you'll see a list of your columns. Drag and drop the fields like this:

    • Drag Month to the Rows area.

    • Drag Platform to the Columns area.

    • Drag Downloads to the Values area. Make sure it says "Sum of Downloads."

And just like that, you have a clean summary table on your "Calculations" sheet that is ready to be turned into a chart.

Step 5: Visualize Your Data on the Dashboard

With your PivotTables ready, it’s time for the fun part: creating the visuals for your "Dashboard" tab. We will use PivotCharts, which are directly linked to your PivotTables.

Downloads Over Time (Line Chart)

The first chart we'll make is a trendline of downloads over time.

  1. Go to your Calculations sheet and click on the PivotTable you just created.

  2. From the PivotTable Analyze tab, click on PivotChart.

  3. Select a Line chart and click OK.

  4. Cut and paste this chart (Ctrl+X, Ctrl+V) onto your Dashboard sheet.

  5. Resize it and clean it up - remove the "field buttons" on the chart (Right-click a button > "Hide all field buttons on chart") and give it a clear title.

Revenue by Country (Bar Chart)

Next, let's see which countries are driving the most revenue.

Follow the same process: create another PivotTable on your Calculations sheet. This time, put Country in the Rows area and Sum of Total Revenue in the Values area. Then, create a Bar PivotChart from it and move it to your dashboard.

KPI "Cards" for Key Metrics

Every dashboard needs big, bold numbers at the top for at-a-glance metrics. These aren’t charts, but just nicely formatted cells linked to your data summaries.

Your ChatGPT Prompt: "How do I create simple KPI cards at the top of my Excel dashboard to show total downloads and total revenue?"

ChatGPT will suggest something like this:

  1. On your Dashboard sheet, merge a few cells and give them a background color.

  2. In one cell, type a title like "Total Downloads."

  3. In the cell below it, type "=". Then navigate to your Calculations sheet, click the PivotTable showing downloads, and select the "Grand Total" cell. Press Enter.

  4. Increase the font size and format the number. Repeat this process for Total Revenue, DAU, and any other KPI you want to highlight.

Step 6: Make Your Dashboard Interactive with Slicers

Slicers are user-friendly buttons that filter your dashboard's data. This allows you to "slice and dice" the information without having to edit any PivotTables manually.

  1. Click on one of your PivotCharts on the dashboard.

  2. Go to the PivotChart Analyze ribbon tab and click Insert Slicer.

  3. Check the box for Platform and Country. Click OK.

  4. Two slicer boxes will appear. You can move and style them to fit your dashboard layout. Now, when you click "iOS" or "Android," your charts will update automatically!

  5. Pro-Tip: To make one slicer control multiple charts, right-click the slicer > Report Connections... and check the boxes for all the PivotTables you want it to control.

You now have a functional, interactive, and professional-looking dashboard in Excel - built a lot easier with a little guidance from ChatGPT.

Final Thoughts

This process shows that you don't need extravagant software to get meaningful insights from your app data. Combining the familiarity of Excel with the on-demand help of ChatGPT allows you to go from a simple data export to a fully interactive report that answers your most important business questions.

However, the most tedious part of this workflow is often the first step: manually downloading CSVs from multiple sources and wrestling them into a single spreadsheet. We built Graphed to solve exactly this problem. Instead of wrestling with data files, you can simply connect your app analytics sources (like Google Analytics 4) directly to our platform. Then, ask for a dashboard using plain English like, "create a dashboard showing monthly downloads, revenue, and DAU/MAU ratio" and get a live, automated report in seconds - no formulas or PivotTables required.