How to Apply a Shape Fill to a Chart in Excel

Filling your Excel charts with a generic color is fine, but you can instantly make your reports more engaging and intuitive by using custom shapes instead. This simple-but-effective technique lets you replace standard bars and columns with icons, logos, or other graphics that give your data more context. This article will walk you through exactly how to apply a shape fill to any chart in Excel, step-by-step.

Why Bother Using Shape Fills in Your Excel Charts?

You might be wondering if this is just a cosmetic trick, but using shapes as chart fills offers some very practical benefits. It's an easy way to level up your reporting and make your data much more impactful.

Enhance Visual Storytelling: A chart of social media followers that uses a Twitter bird or Instagram logo is instantly more readable than one with plain blue bars. Shapes provide immediate context, helping your audience understand the subject matter before they even read the labels. If you're reporting on website traffic from different device types, for example, using a smartphone icon for mobile and a desktop icon for desktop traffic tells a clear story at a glance.
Increase Memorability: Our brains are wired to remember images far better than abstract bars or colors. A thematic chart is more likely to stick in your audience's memory. When your quarterly sales report uses a stacked dollar sign icon to represent revenue growth, that visual metaphor makes the data more concrete and memorable.
Improve Professionalism and Branding: Using your company's logo as a fill in internal reports reinforces branding and gives your dashboards a polished, professional finish. It shows an attention to detail that sets your work apart from standard, out-of-the-box Excel charts.

Preparing Your Shape: Finding the Best Image for Your Chart

Before you can apply a shape, you need to have one ready. The best shapes are simple, clear, and easily recognizable. A cluttered, low-resolution photo won't work nearly as well as a clean, high-contrast icon. Here's where you can source your shapes.

Option 1: Use Excel's Built-in Shapes and Icons

Excel comes with a surprisingly robust library of built-in shapes and professional icons that are perfectly suited for this task.

To insert a shape:

Navigate to the Insert tab on the Excel ribbon.
Click on Shapes.
Choose any shape from the dropdown menu (e.g., a star, an arrow, a circle). Click and drag on your worksheet to draw it.

To insert an icon: This is often the better choice, as Excel’s icons are modern, scalable vector graphics (SVGs).

Go to the Insert tab.
Click on Icons.
A new window will open with a massive, searchable library of icons. Find one that fits your data (e.g., search for "people," "money," or "computer").
Select your icon and click Insert.

Once your shape or icon is on the worksheet, you can change its color by selecting it, going to the Shape Format or Graphic Format tab, and using the Shape Fill or Graphic Fill option.

Option 2: Use Your Own Image or Logo

For fully custom reports, you'll want to use your own images, such as a company logo or an icon you found online. The process is just as simple, but the key is to choose the right kind of image file.

Best File Type: PNG with a Transparent Background. This is extremely important. If you use a JPG or a PNG with a solid background, your shape fill will have an unattractive white box around it inside your chart. A transparent PNG ensures a clean, professional look.
Keep it Simple: An intricate, detailed photograph will look blurry and confusing when scaled down into a chart bar. Simple, high-contrast logos or icons with a clear silhouette work best.
Where to Find Icons: If you don't have a company logo, websites like Flaticon, The Noun Project, or Font Awesome are excellent resources for finding free, high-quality icons in PNG format.

To insert your own image:

Click the Insert tab.
Select Pictures and choose This Device...
Navigate to your saved image file and click Insert.

Step-by-Step Guide: How to Apply a Shape Fill to Your Chart

With an Excel spreadsheet open and a shape ready to go, the actual process takes less than ten seconds. It all comes down to a simple copy-and-paste action.

Step 1: Create a Basic Chart

First, you need a chart. This technique works best on column charts and bar charts. For this example, let's use a simple column chart showing monthly website traffic.

Enter your data in two columns (e.g., Month and Sessions).
Select your data range, including the headers.
Go to the Insert tab and click on the Column Chart icon. Choose a simple 2-D Clustered Column chart.

You should now have a standard chart with blue columns representing your data.

Step 2: Copy Your Shape

Next, find the shape, icon, or image you want to use (either already on your worksheet or in a file folder). Click on it once to select it, then copy it to your clipboard by pressing Ctrl+C (or Cmd+C on a Mac). You won't see anything happen, but the image is now copied and ready to be pasted.

Pro Tip: You don’t even need the shape to be in your Excel file. You can copy an image directly from another program like PowerPoint or a web browser.

Step 3: Paste the Shape onto Your Chart

This is where the magic happens. How you paste the shape determines whether you apply it to the entire series or just a single data point.

To apply the shape to all the columns in the series:

Click just once on any one of the blue columns. You'll see that all the columns in that series are now selected (indicated by small circles at their corners). Now, press Ctrl+V (or Cmd+V) to paste. Your shape will instantly replace the solid color in every column.

To apply the shape to only one specific column:

First, click once on any column to select the series. Then, pause for a moment and click again on the single column you want to change. Now, only that individual column should be selected. Press Ctrl+V to paste. This is a great way to highlight a specific data point, such as your best-performing month.

Customizing Your Shape Fill: Stretch, Stack, or Scale

After pasting your shape, Excel defaults to the "Stretch" setting, where your image is stretched vertically to fill the height of the column. This usually looks distorted and unflattering. Fortunately, you have much better options available in the formatting pane.

Right-click on one of the columns where you applied the shape fill and select Format Data Series... (or Format Data Point... if you only selected one). This will open a detailed formatting pane on the right side of your screen.
In the pane, click on the paint bucket icon, which represents Fill & Line.
Expand the Fill section if it isn't already. Since you've pasted a picture, "Picture or texture fill" will be selected.
Below that, you will find three critical options: Stretch, Stack, and Stack and scale with.

Understanding the Fill Options

Stretch: This is the default. It takes a single copy of your image and stretches it to fill the entire bar. Unless your shape is very simple, this will probably look warped.

Stack: This is the most common and visually appealing option. It preserves the shape's original proportions and stacks units one on top of another until it fills the bar. If you used a dollar bill icon, you would see a stack of dollar bills. Perfect for creating an infographic-style look.

Stack and scale with: This powerful option gives you complete control over your chart's scale. It allows you to define exactly how much value one unit of your picture represents. For instance, if your data is in the thousands, you could set "Units / Picture" to 1,000. This means one full icon on your chart represents 1,000 units' worth of value. This standardizes the visualization and is fantastic for depicting large numbers in an easy-to-digest way.

Best Practices for Shape Fills

Clarity Above Cuteness: The goal is to enhance data comprehension, not to create a distraction. If your shape fill makes the chart harder to read, stick with a solid color.
Check for Transparency: Re-emphasizing this point because it's a common mistake: Always use a PNG with a transparent background. Nothing looks less professional than a shape fill with a white box around it.
Stick to Simple Charts: This technique is best for simple 2D bar and column charts. It doesn't work well on line charts and can be very confusing on pie charts or 3D charts.
Mind the Contrast: Ensure your shape's color has enough contrast against the chart's background and gridlines to remain clearly visible. You might need to remove the gridlines (select them and press Delete) for a cleaner look.

Final Thoughts

Using custom shape fills is a quick and powerful way to transform standard Excel charts into branded, engaging, and highly informative visuals. By moving beyond default colors and using icons or logos that relate directly to your data, you can tell a more compelling story and ensure your reports stand out.

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