How to Show Data Points on Google Sheets

A chart full of bars or lines is good, but a chart that tells you the exact numbers behind that visual story is even better. Adding data point labels isn't just about decoration, it's about providing instant clarity that saves your audience from squinting and guessing. This guide will walk you through exactly how to add, customize, and strategically highlight data points in your Google Sheets charts to make them more impactful and easier to read.

Why Bother Showing Data Points on a Chart?

While a chart’s shape gives you a general feel for the trend, displaying the actual values directly on the graph provides a new level of precision and professionalism. It turns a vague visual into a hard-hitting piece of evidence.

Instant Clarity: Your audience can see the exact value of each bar, line point, or pie slice without having to trace it back to the y-axis. This is especially helpful for presentations where you need to make your point quickly.
Reduced Ambiguity: For two bars that look very close in height, adding a data label immediately shows whether the difference is $10 or $10,000.
Highlighting Key Numbers: You can use data labels to draw attention to specific milestones, like an all-time-high in sales or the quarter you surpassed a major goal.

The Basics: How to Add Data Labels to Any Chart

Let's start with the most common scenario: adding labels to every data point in a series. For this example, we’ll use a simple column chart showing monthly sales.

Here’s the sample data we’ll work with:

Month,Sales Jan,$12,500 Feb,$15,200 Mar,$14,800 Apr,$17,100 May,$19,500 Jun,$22,300

Step-by-Step Instructions:

Select Your Data: Highlight all the cells that contain your data, including the headers (in our case, A1 through B7).
Insert the Chart: Go to the menu and click Insert > Chart. Google Sheets will automatically suggest a chart type, usually a good one like a column or line chart.
Open the Chart Editor: If the Chart Editor pane doesn't open automatically on the right, just double-click anywhere on your new chart to open it.
Navigate to Series Customization: In the editor pane, click on the Customize tab. From there, expand the Series section. This is where you control the look of your data series (e.g., the blue bars).
Add the Data Labels: Scroll down within the Series menu until you see a checkbox for Data labels. Click it. Just like that, the value for each column will appear directly on your chart.

That’s it! You've successfully added labels. But now, let's make them look great and perfectly readable.

Customizing Your Data Labels for Maximum Impact

Putting numbers on a chart is the first step. Making them clear, readable, and non-distracting is what separates a good chart from a great one. The 'Data labels' subsection in the Chart Editor gives you a ton of control.

Positioning Your Labels

The Position dropdown menu lets you choose where the label appears relative to its data point. Your options will vary slightly based on the chart type, but for a column chart, they typically include:

Auto: Google Sheets does its best to place the label in a readable spot.
Center: Places the label in the middle of the bar.
Inside end: Puts the label at the very top of the bar, but still inside it. This is a clean, popular choice.
Inside base: Puts the label at the bottom of the bar, inside it.
Outside end: Places the label just above the top of the bar. Great for preventing the label from overlapping with the bar's color.

Formatting the Numbers

Does your data represent currency, percentages, or just plain numbers? If your labels are showing up as 12500 instead of $12,500, you can fix it here.

Find the Number format option within the Data labels settings. By default, it’s set to From source data, but you can override it. Pick from the list or create a custom format to add currency symbols, control decimal places, or format large numbers (e.g., show $12.5K instead of $12,500).

Adjusting Font and Color

Directly below the positioning options, you’ll find settings for Text color, Font, and Font size.

Pro Tip: Readability is everything. If you have dark columns, use a light-colored font (like white) positioned inside the bar. If you have light-colored columns, use a dark font. Your goal is maximum contrast so the numbers are easy to glance at and understand.

Applying Labels to Different Types of Charts

While the process is similar across most charts, certain types have unique options for displaying data points.

Line Charts: Emphasizing the Points

For line charts, adding data labels can help pinpoint values at specific moments in time. However, a line chart also has a more literal interpretation of “showing data points”: the markers themselves.

In the Customize > Series menu for a line chart, you can adjust:

Point size: Change this from ‘None’ to a size like 7px to add a visible circle marker at each data point along the line.
Point shape: You can choose from circles, triangles, squares, stars, and more to style your points.

Combining a visible point marker with a data label above it can make your line charts extremely easy to follow.

Pie Charts: Showing Values and Percentages

For pie charts, data labels are essential. In the Customize > Pie chart section of the editor, look for the Slice label setting. Here, you can choose to show:

Value: Displays the raw number for that slice.
Percentage: Shows what percentage of the whole that slice represents.
Value and percentage: Displays both, offering complete context.
Label: Shows the category name for that slice.

For a clean look, try showing the category name and the percentage on the slice itself. It makes your chart self-explanatory.

Advanced Tip: Highlighting a Single Data Point

What if you don’t want to clutter your chart with dozens of labels? Sometimes, you just want to highlight a single, important value — like your best-ever sales month. Unfortunately, there's no official "label this one point" button in Google Sheets. But there's a clever workaround.

Let's use our sales data again, but this time we only want to call out the impressive $22,300 figure for June.

Create a New "Labels" Column: In your sheet, add a new column right next to your sales data. Let's call it "Highlight Label".

Notice that this new column is empty for every row except for the one you want to highlight. In that cell, you simply repeat the value from the 'Sales' column.

Add a New Series to Your Chart: Double-click your chart to open the Chart Editor. Go to the Setup tab and click Add Series. For the data range, select your new "Highlight Label" column (C1:C7 in our example).
Customize the New Series: Your chart will now have a second set of bars (likely in red) with only one bar visible for June. Now we'll make the bar invisible and keep the label.

Go to the Customize > Series tab.
In the series selector dropdown at the top, choose your new 'Highlight Label' series.
Check the Data labels box to add a label just for this series. Position it as you see fit (e.g., Outside end).
Now, make the extra bar disappear. Set its Fill color to None. You will now have just a data label floating over the original bar.

This trick gives you precise control, allowing you to build clean, professional charts that guide your audience’s attention exactly where you want it.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

As you add data points to your charts, watch out for these common visual traps:

Data Label Overload: If you have a chart with hundreds of data points, adding a label to every single one will create an unreadable mess. In these cases, it's better to highlight specific points with the workaround above, or simply let the trendline speak for itself.
Poor Contrast: Dark blue text on a dark blue bar is impossible to read. Always check for contrast between your label and its background. When in doubt, position the label outside the bar or use white text with a transparent background.
Inconsistent Formatting: Make sure currency is formatted as currency on every label, and that you're using a consistent number of decimal places. Small inconsistencies can make a report feel sloppy.

Final Thoughts

Learning how to effectively display data points transforms your Google Sheets charts from simple visuals into compelling, data-driven stories. By adding and thoughtfully customizing labels, you provide the detail and clarity needed to answer questions before they're asked, making your reports more effective and professional.

While mastering these tweaks provides greater control, we know the process of setting up charts and dashboards manually can still be a huge time-sink. For marketing and sales teams, this is where Graphed comes in. We designed our tool so you can connect all your data sources — like Google Analytics, Shopify, and your ad platforms — and generate real-time dashboards just by describing what you want in plain English. Instead of clicking through five different customization menus to get a single chart right, you can simply ask for "a line chart of Shopify revenue vs. Facebook ad spend for the last 90 days" and get an interactive dashboard in seconds, saving you hours of manual work.