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How to Create a Trend Report in Excel with AI

Cody Schneider•

Tracking trends in your data is one of the most powerful ways to understand what's working, what's not, and where your business is headed. Excel, the trusty spreadsheet tool on nearly every computer, is perfectly capable of building insightful trend reports. This article will walk you through exactly how to create a trend report in Excel, from basic charts to more advanced analysis, and show you how AI can drastically speed up the entire process.

What is a Trend Report and Why Create It in Excel?

A trend report visualizes data over time to reveal patterns, growth, seasonality, or unexpected shifts. It answers critical business questions like:

  • Are our sales growing month-over-month?

  • Is website traffic from our recent SEO efforts trending upward?

  • How did our email marketing performance change in Q3 compared to Q2?

  • Are support ticket volumes increasing, suggesting a product issue?

While dedicated business intelligence tools exist, Excel remains a popular choice for a few key reasons: it's familiar, flexible, and most people already have it. You can quickly get your hands dirty with raw data and build something custom without needing a team of data engineers.

Step 1: Get Your Data Ready for Analysis

Before you can spot any trends, you need clean, well-structured data. For a trend report, the most important element is a time-series component - usually a date.

Your data should be organized in a simple, tabular format. Each row is a single record, and each column is a specific attribute. At minimum, you'll need two columns:

  1. Date: This column tracks when an event happened (e.g., 2023-10-26).

  2. Metric: This column tracks what you want to measure (e.g., Sales, Daily Users, Clicks).

Here's a simple example of what your raw data might look like for tracking daily website sessions:

Date, Sessions, Source2023-11-01, 1502, Organic Search2023-11-01, 850, Paid Search2023-11-01, 430, Direct2023-11-02, 1620, Organic Search2023-11-02, 910, Paid Search2023-11-02, 455, Direct... ... ...

Data Cleaning Best Practices:

  • Consistent Dates: Make sure all dates are in the same format. Use Excel's "Format Cells" option to set a consistent Date format.

  • Fix Missing Values: Look for blank cells in your metrics column. Depending on the context, you can either enter a zero or remove the row, but be consistent.

  • Remove Duplicates: Go to the "Data" tab and use the "Remove Duplicates" feature to ensure each data point is unique.

  • Format as a Table: This is a simple but powerful tip. Click anywhere in your data range and press Ctrl + T (or Cmd + T on a Mac). This turns your data into an official Excel Table, making it much easier to sort, filter, and add to charts.

Step 2: Visualize the Basic Trend with a Line Chart

The fastest way to see a trend is to plot it on a line chart. A line chart is the quintessential tool for tracking a value over a continuous period.

How to Create a Line Chart:

  1. Select Your Data: If you're using an Excel Table, simply click a cell within it. Otherwise, highlight the columns for your Date and your chosen Metric (e.g., "Date" and "Sessions").

  2. Insert Chart: Go to the "Insert" tab on the ribbon. In the Charts group, click on the "Insert Line or Area Chart" icon.

  3. Choose a Chart Type: Select the first 2-D Line chart option.

Instantly, Excel will generate a chart showing the ups and downs of your data over time. You've officially created your first basic trend report! From here, you can customize the chart titles, axis labels, and colors to make it more presentable.

Step 3: Dive Deeper with PivotTables

What if your daily data is too "noisy" with day-to-day fluctuations? To spot bigger, more meaningful trends, you'll often want to group your data by week, month, or quarter. This is where PivotTables are incredibly powerful.

A PivotTable lets you quickly summarize and reorganize large datasets without writing complex formulas.

How to Use a PivotTable for Trend Analysis:

  1. Click anywhere inside your Excel Table.

  2. Go to the "Insert" tab and click "PivotTable." Excel will likely pre-select your table as the data source, just click "OK."

  3. A new sheet will appear with the PivotTable Fields pane on the right-hand side.

  4. Drag and drop the "Date" field into the "Rows" area at the bottom right. Excel will automatically group the dates by years, quarters, and months for you.

  5. Drag and drop your metric (e.g., "Sessions") into the "Values" area. Make sure it's set to "Sum" or "Average," depending on what you want to analyze.

You now have a clean summary table showing your total sessions per month, quarter, and year. To visualize this, just click inside your new PivotTable, go to the "PivotTable Analyze" tab, and click "PivotChart" to create a line chart based on this summarized data. This chart will give you a much clearer high-level view of your performance.

Step 4: Enhance Your Chart with Moving Averages and Trendlines

To go beyond simple observation, Excel provides built-in tools to help quantify the trend.

Add a Moving Average:

A moving average smooths out short-term fluctuations to highlight the longer-term trend. It's particularly useful for "noisy" data with a lot of daily spikes and dips.

  1. Right-click on the data line in your chart.

  2. Select "Add Trendline..." from the context menu.

  3. In the "Format Trendline" pane that appears on the right, select "Moving Average."

  4. Set the "Period." A 7-day period is common for daily data to smooth out day-of-the-week effects, while a 3-period average works well for monthly data.

You'll see a new, smoother line appear on your chart, giving you a clearer indication of the actual trajectory of your metric, stripped of the daily chaos.

Add a Linear Trendline:

A linear trendline is a straight line that best fits your data points. It shows whether your data is generally increasing, decreasing, or staying flat over the entire period.

  1. Again, right-click your data line and select "Add Trendline..."

  2. This time, choose "Linear."

  3. For extra insight, check the box at the bottom for "Display R-squared value on chart." The R-squared value (from 0 to 1) tells you how well the trendline fits your data. A value closer to 1 means the trend is very consistent.

How to Use AI to Build Trend Reports Faster

As you can see, creating a trend report in Excel is powerful but involves a fair number of manual steps: cleaning data, inserting charts, creating pivot tables, and adding trendlines. AI features, both inside and outside of Excel, are changing the game by automating much of this busywork.

Using Excel's Built-in "Analyze Data" Feature

Many people don't realize that Excel has a powerful AI feature right on the Home tab. It's called "Analyze Data." This tool automatically examines your data and suggests relevant PivotTables, charts, and insights.

Here’s how to use it:

  1. Make sure your data is formatted as an Excel Table (Ctrl+T).

  2. Click any cell inside your table.

  3. Go to the "Home" tab on the ribbon and click the "Analyze Data" button on the far right.

  4. A pane will open up showing you several auto-generated charts and PivotTables. Very often, it will immediately identify the time-series data and provide a line chart showing the trend over time.

  5. Even better, you can use the textbox at the top of the pane to ask questions in plain English, like "Show me average sales by quarter" or "Which product had the highest revenue?" Excel will do its best to generate the right PivotTable or chart for you.

The "Analyze Data" feature radically cuts down on the time it takes to go from a wall of data to your first meaningful insight.

Using External AI Tools like ChatGPT for a Boost

AI chatbots can act as an incredibly smart assistant, helping you with the more complex parts of Excel analysis.

Getting the Right Formula

Struggling to remember how to calculate percent change? Just ask a chatbot.

  • Example Prompt: "I'm in Excel. I have monthly sales in column B, starting at B2. Give me a formula for cell C3 that calculates the month-over-month growth percentage compared to the previous month in B2."

The AI will provide the correct formula, =(B3-B2)/B2, and even explain how it works and how to format the cell as a percentage.

Data Tidying and Macros

AI is also excellent at writing simple scripts (VBA macros) to automate repetitive cleaning tasks that go beyond Excel's built-in tools.

  • Example Prompt: "Write me an Excel VBA macro that finds all cells in column C that say 'Not Provided' and replaces them with a blank cell."

You don't have to learn how to code, you just have to describe the task you want to perform. However, be cautious: always work on a copy of your data when using scripts and double-check the results. While helpful, chatbots can also generate erroneous code if they misunderstand the prompt.

Final Thoughts

Creating a trend report in Excel is a fundamental skill for anyone working with data. By combining clear data preparation with tools like line charts, PivotTables, and trendlines, you can transform rows of numbers into a compelling story about your business performance. And with AI features like "Analyze Data" cutting out the repetitive tasks, it’s faster than ever to get straight to the insights.

The biggest challenge often isn't building the report in Excel, but the tedious process of constantly downloading CSVs from platforms like Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, Shopify, and Salesforce just to get the data into the spreadsheet. To eliminate that friction, we designed Graphed to connect directly to all your data sources. Instead of manual data dumps and PivotTable creation, you can ask a question in plain English, like "how's my Shopify sales trending this month compared to last month?" and instantly get a live, automated trend report. It replaces hours of spreadsheet work with a simple conversation.