How to Use Charts in Excel

Turning rows of raw numbers into a clear, compelling visual story is one of Excel's greatest strengths. A well-designed chart can reveal trends, highlight comparisons, and communicate insights far more effectively than a spreadsheet full of data. This guide will walk you through everything you need to know about using charts in Excel, from picking the right type to customizing it for a professional finish.

Why Bother with Charts in the First Place?

Our brains are wired to process visual information quickly. When you look at a table of sales figures, your eyes have to scan line by line to understand the data. A chart, however, gives you the big picture in an instant. Good charts don’t just look nice, they make your data understandable and actionable.

With an Excel chart, you can:

• Spot Trends Quickly: Is revenue growing month over month? Is website traffic declining? A line chart makes these trends jump off the page.
• Make Simple Comparisons: Which product is your bestseller? Which marketing channel drives the most leads? A bar chart shows these comparisons at a glance.
• Communicate Your Story: Whether you're presenting to your team, your boss, or a client, a chart provides the evidence to support your point in an easy-to-digest format.

Essentially, charts transform your data from a list of facts into a compelling narrative that guides decision-making.

Choosing the Right Chart for Your Data

Excel offers a huge variety of chart types, and choosing the right one is the first step toward effective visualization. Throwing your data into the wrong chart type can be more confusing than not having a chart at all. Here are the most common chart types and when to use them.

Column or Bar Charts

Best for: Comparing values across different categories.

Column charts (vertical bars) and bar charts (horizontal bars) are workhorses for data comparison. If you have data split into distinct groups - like sales by product, website sessions by marketing channel, or revenue by region - these are your go-to charts. The length of the bar represents the value, making it incredibly easy to see which category is biggest or smallest.

Pro Tip: Use a column chart when you have a smaller number of categories. If you have long category names or many categories, switch to a bar chart so the labels are easier to read without tilting your head.

Line Charts

Best for: Showing trends or progress over time.

A line chart is perfect for tracking a metric over a continuous period, such as days, months, quarters, or years. By connecting data points with a line, it clearly shows the upward or downward trend of a value. It’s ideal for visualizing metrics like monthly users in Google Analytics, quarterly sales figures, or daily ad spend.

Pro Tip: While you can compare multiple series on one line chart (e.g., traffic from Google vs. Facebook over a year), be careful not to add too many lines. Three to four lines is usually a good limit to avoid a messy, unreadable chart.

Pie Charts

Best for: Showing the composition of a whole at a single point in time.

Pie charts show parts of a whole, where the entire pie represents 100%, and each slice represents a percentage of that total. They are great for visualizing things like the breakdown of a marketing budget by channel or the percentage of sales coming from different customer segments for a specific month.

Warning: Pie charts are easily misused. Avoid them if you have more than five or six categories, as the slices become too hard to distinguish. And never use a pie chart to compare data over time - use a line or column chart for that.

Scatter Plots (XY Charts)

Best for: Showing the relationship between two different numerical variables.

A scatter plot helps you see if a relationship, or correlation, exists between two sets of numbers. Each dot on the chart represents a single data point with two values. For example, you could plot daily ad spend on the x-axis and daily revenue on the y-axis to see if higher spending correlates with more revenue. If the dots form a clear line or curve, you've found a relationship.

Combo Charts

Best for: Visualizing two different data types on the same chart.

Sometimes you need to show values that are on completely different scales. For instance, you might want to graph monthly sales in dollars (which could be in the tens of thousands) alongside the lead-to-sale conversion rate (which is a percentage). A combo chart lets you use two chart types - like columns and a line - with a secondary axis to display both datasets clearly without one dwarfing the other.

How to Create a Chart in Excel: Step-by-Step

Creating a chart is a straightforward process. Let's walk through the steps to get from a table of data to your first chart.

Step 1: Get Your Data Ready

The foundation of any good chart is well-organized data. Excel works best when your data is structured in a simple, tabular format. Typically, this means:

• Your categories or time periods are in the first column (e.g., 'January', 'February', 'March').
• Your numerical data series are in the subsequent columns, each with a clear header (e.g., 'Sales', 'Expenses', 'Profit').
• There are no empty rows or columns within your data range.

Step 2: Select Your Data

Click and drag your cursor to highlight the entire range of data you want to include in the chart. Be sure to include the column and row headers, as Excel will use them to automatically create chart titles and labels.

Step 3: Insert Your Chart

Navigate to the Insert tab on the ribbon. In the Charts group, you’ll see icons for all the major chart types. For a quick start, click on Recommended Charts. Excel will analyze your selected data and suggest a few chart types that best match your data structure. Often, this is the quickest way to get a suitable chart.

Alternatively, if you know which chart type you want, just click on its icon (e.g., the column chart icon) and select a style from the dropdown menu (e.g., 2-D Column, 3-D Column, etc.). Excel will instantly insert the chart directly onto your worksheet.

Customizing Your Chart to Tell a Clearer Story

The default chart Excel creates is just a starting point. A few simple customizations can dramatically improve its readability and visual appeal.

When you click on your chart, two new tabs will appear on the ribbon: Chart Design and Format. These are your main control centers for customization.

Using the Chart Design Tab

On the Chart Design tab, you can make broad changes to the chart’s appearance:

• Change Chart Type: If you realize you selected the wrong type, you can easily switch it here without starting over.
• Switch Row/Column: This handy button swaps the data on the x and y axes, instantly changing the orientation of your chart.
• Chart Styles: Browse through a gallery of pre-built design styles to quickly change the look and feel of your chart with different color schemes and layouts.
• Change Colors: Select a new color palette for your data series to match your company's branding or to simply add some visual flair.

Adding and Removing Chart Elements

To the top right of your chart, you'll see three small icons. The top one, a green plus sign (+), is for managing Chart Elements. This is where you can add or remove key components to make your chart more informative.

• Axes and Axis Titles: Keep your axes visible so viewers can read the values. Add titles like 'Month' or 'Total Revenue' so everyone knows exactly what each axis represents.
• Chart Title: Your chart must have a clear, descriptive title. "Sales vs. Profit – Q1 2024" is far more useful than a generic "Chart Title."
• Data Labels: Sometimes it's helpful to display the exact numerical value directly on the chart itself, either on top of or next to your bars, lines, or pie slices.
• Legend: If you have multiple data series on a single chart (e.g., sales data for three different regions), the legend is essential for telling them apart.

Pro Tip: Create a Dynamic Chart With Excel Tables

One of the best ways to keep your charts up to date is to base them on an official Excel Table. First, select your range of data and press Ctrl+T (or go to Insert > Table) to convert it into a table. Then, create your chart based on this table.

Now, whenever you add a new row of data to the bottom of the table, your chart will automatically update to include it. No more manually adjusting the data source range every time you add a new month's numbers!

Final Thoughts

Creating charts in Excel is a fundamental skill for anyone who works with data. By choosing the right chart and making a few thoughtful customizations, you can transform intimidating spreadsheets into clear insights that drive smarter decisions. The key is to start with well-organized data, select the visual that best tells your story, and keep it clean and simple.

As you become more comfortable, you might find yourself pulling data from multiple sources like Google Analytics, Shopify, Facebook Ads, and Salesforce. Manually downloading CSVs and building reports in Excel every week can become time-consuming. That's where we specifically built Graphed to help. We connect to all your marketing and sales tools, allowing you to ask for a chart or dashboard in plain English. Just ask, "Show me a line chart of my marketing channel performance from Google Analytics for the past 90 days," and our AI builds a live, interactive dashboard for you in seconds, saving you hours of manual work.