How to Make a Chart in Google Sheets with AI

Manually building charts in Google Sheets used to be a tedious, multi-step process. But now, you can create insightful visualizations just by asking for them in plain English. This guide will walk you through exactly how to use Google Sheets' built-in AI to make charts instantly, covering the essential steps, best practices, and where you might still run into limitations.

Goodbye, Manual Chart Builder. Hello, AI.

For years, creating a chart in Google Sheets involved the same routine: highlight your data, click Insert > Chart, and then spend several minutes wrestling with the Chart editor to get the axes, labels, and colors just right. It worked, but it was slow and clumsy, especially when you were just trying to get a quick visualization of your data.

Google has changed the game with its "Explore" feature - a small but powerful AI tool that lives right inside your sheet. Instead of clicking through menus, you can now type a question like "bar chart of sales by month" and get an answer instantly. This approach saves time and makes data analysis far more intuitive, allowing you to focus on the insights, not the setup.

Step-by-Step: Making Your First AI Chart in Google Sheets

Ready to give it a try? Building a chart with the Explore feature is incredibly simple once you know the process. Let's walk through it with a common example: analyzing monthly sales data.

Step 1: Get Your Data Ready

AI is smart, but it's not a mind reader. It can only work with the data you give it, and the quality of your results will depend entirely on how clean and well-structured your data is. Before you even think about building a chart, make sure your data follows these simple rules:

• Use Clear Headers: Give each column a simple, descriptive header in the first row (e.g., "Date," "Product Category," "Units Sold," "Revenue"). The AI uses these headers to understand your requests.

• Keep Formatting Consistent: Make sure your dates are all in a date format, your numbers are in a number or currency format, and your text fields are consistent.

• Remove Blank Rows and Columns: Get rid of any completely empty rows or columns within your data set. Gaps can confuse the AI and lead to incomplete or incorrect charts.

• One Table Per Sheet: For best results, keep each distinct data set on its own tab or sheet. Don't mix your sales data table with your website traffic data table on the same page.

Here’s a look at a clean, simple dataset ready for analysis:

Step 2: Open the Explore Feature

Once your data is organized, it's time to bring in the AI. You'll find the Explore button in the bottom-right corner of your Google Sheet. It looks like a small square with a sparkle in it.

Simply click this button, and a new panel will slide out from the right side of your screen. You can also access it by going to Tools > Explore in the main menu.

The Explore panel will automatically scan your data and suggest a few basic charts and insights without you even having to ask. It's a great starting point, but the real power comes from asking your own questions.

Step 3: Ask Your Question in Plain English

At the top of the Explore panel, you'll see a text box that says "Ask a question about this data." This is where the magic happens. Think about what you want to see, and just type it in. The AI understands natural language, so you don't need to learn any special syntax.

Using our sample data, you could ask things like:

• "Revenue by Product Category"

• "Pie chart of units sold for each category"

• "Top selling product category by revenue"

• "Line chart of revenue over time"

As you type, the AI will provide a real-time answer in the form of a chart. For instance, asking "pie chart of revenue by product category" will instantly generate a pie chart showing the proportion of total revenue from T-Shirts, Hoodies, and Mugs.

Step 4: Add the Chart to Your Sheet

Once you see a chart you like, you can easily add it directly to your spreadsheet. Hover over the chart in the Explore panel. You'll see two icons appear in the top-right corner of the chart visualization.

1. Insert Chart icon: Looks like a little bar chart icon. Clicking this will place the chart directly into your current sheet as a floating object, which you can move and resize as needed.

2. See Formula icon: Looks like a spreadsheet grid. This is useful for more advanced pivot table insights, showing you the underlying formula (like PIVOT or QUERY) used to generate the summary data.

For a standard visualization, just click "Insert Chart." It'll pop right into your sheet for use in your dashboards or reports.

Step 5: Customize Your Chart (Optional)

The AI-generated chart is a fantastic start, but you're not stuck with its default design. Once you've inserted it into your sheet, it becomes a standard Google Sheets chart. Click on the chart, then click the three vertical dots in the corner, and select "Edit chart."

This opens the familiar Chart editor panel, where you can:

• Change chart types (e.g., switch from a bar chart to a column or line chart).

• Customize colors, fonts, and backgrounds.

• Edit titles and axis labels.

• Add or remove data labels.

Tips for Getting Better Results from the AI

Using the Explore feature is straightforward, but you can get even better results by refining how you "prompt" the AI. Here are a few tips to keep in mind.

Be Specific With Your Request

The more specific you are, the more likely you are to get the exact chart you want on the first try. Instead of something generic like "sales data," try being more descriptive.

• Good: "Revenue by category"

• Better: "Bar chart showing total revenue for each product category"

• Best: "Vertical column chart of revenue by category, sorted high to low"

By specifying the chart type (column chart), the metric (revenue), and the dimension (category), you leave less room for misinterpretation.

Iterate on Your Questions

If the first result isn't quite right, don't give up. Treat it like a conversation. You can refine your request in the text box. For example, after getting a bar chart of all your sales, you could follow up with:

• "Show this as a pie chart instead"

• "Only for T-Shirts"

• "Group dates by month"

This process of building on previous questions lets you drill down and explore your data without having to manually apply filters or create new formulas each time.

Where Google Sheets AI Can't Help (And What to Do)

The AI in Google Sheets is a massive step forward for quick, on-the-fly analysis, but it's important to understand its limitations. For marketers, founders, and sales teams, these limitations often show up in three key areas.

Limitation 1: It Only Works with Static, Manual Data

The biggest challenge is that the Explore feature can only analyze the data that is currently in the spreadsheet. It’s a snapshot in time. Every Monday morning, if you want an updated report, you’re back to the old routine: logging into your platforms (Google Analytics, Shopify, Facebook Ads), exporting a new CSV file, and pasting it into your sheet. The chart you thoughtfully created last week is now obsolete and doesn't update automatically.

Limitation 2: It Can't Connect the Dots Between Platforms

Your business data doesn't live in a single spreadsheet. It's scattered across a dozen different apps. You have ad spend data in Facebook Ads, website traffic in Google Analytics, sales data in Shopify, and customer info in a CRM like HubSpot. The Google Sheets AI can't answer cross-platform questions like:

“Which Facebook Ad campaign generated the most Shopify sales?”

Answering that requires manually pulling data from both sources and meticulously stitching it together in your sheet - a process that is time-consuming and prone to errors. The AI can only see one isolated piece of the puzzle at a time.

Limitation 3: It Lacks Deep Context

While the AI is good at reading simple column headers, it doesn't have a true, deep understanding of the meaning behind the data. It doesn't know the difference between "Sessions" and "Users" in Google Analytics or what a "conversion rate" truly represents for your business. This means you’re often left to interpret the numbers yourself, which can be challenging without a strong data literacy background.

Final Thoughts

Using the AI-powered Explore feature in Google Sheets is an excellent way to speed up your data analysis and create quick visualizations from a single CSV or data set. By prepping your data properly and asking clear, specific questions, you can turn raw numbers into actionable charts in seconds instead of minutes.

For those repetitive, cross-platform reporting tasks - like tracking ad spend against sales or building a complete marketing funnel dashboard - the manual exporting process can quickly become draining. For that, we built Graphed to be the solution. Instead of exporting CSVs, you connect your data sources (like Google Ads, Shopify, and Salesforce) directly. From there, you just ask questions in plain English - like "create a dashboard showing my Shopify revenue by traffic source from Google Analytics" - and get a live, auto-updating dashboard in seconds. No more manual work, just a real-time view of your business performance.