How to shade % of sparkline cell (cheap inline bar chart)

[skierpage]

In Calc I have a column of numbers. I want a visual representation of each row. I have made a bar chart of the numbers, but I want a column that looks like a bar chart: each cell in it is partially filled with a color according to the number on its row. E.g. if $C4 is 70, then cell $D4 is 70% filled in.

I think this is a very simple “sparkline” where the input range is one cell, the output range is the cell next to it, and it draws a bar. But however I fiddle with sparklines nothing appears in the cell. I couldn’t find an “intro to sparklines in Calc”; the help for the dialog fields isn’t overview and the blog post announcing this great feature doesn’t explain how to work it.

[skierpage]

I found Simple horizontal bar chart please! and someone referred to Conditional Formatting - All cells , which has a section on formatting a cell as a colored data bar, which is what I needed . I’ll leave sparklines for another day.

Doc suggestion: The help for sparklines should say “If you only want to represent a single value in the cell, consider using Conditional Formatting.” And conversely, the help for conditional formatting should say “If you want to graph multiple values in a cell, see Sparklines.”