Can i make graphs in excel

Charts are also considered more visual than graphs, since they often take a different shape than a generic x- and y-axis. People often use charts and graphs in presentations to give management, client, or team members a quick snapshot into progress or results. You can create a chart or graph to represent nearly any kind of quantitative data — doing so will save you the time and frustration of poring through spreadsheets to find relationships and trends.

Excel also has a variety of preset chart and graph types so you can select one that best represents the data relationship s you want to highlight. Although Microsoft Excel is familiar, you were never meant to manage work with it. See how Excel and Smartsheet compare across five factors: work management, collaboration, visibility, accessibility, and integrations. Watch the full comparison. Excel offers a large library of chart and graph types to help visually present your data.

Of course, you can also add graphical elements to enhance and customize a chart or graph. In Excel , there are five main categories of charts or graphs:. Another popular chart is a waterfall chart, which is essentially a series of column graphs that show positive and negative changes over time. There is no Excel preset for a waterfall chart, but you can download a template to help make the process easier.

Below are the top five best practices to make your chart or graph as clear and useful as possible:. Choose Appropriate Themes: Consider your audience, the topic, and the main point of your chart when selecting a theme. While it can be fun to experiment with different styles, choose the theme that best fits your purpose.

Use Text Wisely: While charts and graphs are primarily visual tools, you will likely include some text such as titles or axis labels. Place Elements Intelligently: Pay attention to where you place titles, legends, symbols, and any other graphical elements. They should enhance your chart, not detract from it. Sort Data Prior to Creating the Chart: People often forget to sort data or remove duplicates before creating the chart, which makes the visual unintuitive and can result in errors.

To generate a chart or graph in Excel, you must first provide Excel with data to pull from. To make a bar graph, highlight the data and include the titles of the X and Y-axis. Then, go to the Insert tab, and in the charts section, click the column icon. Choose the graph you wish from the dropdown window that appears. In this example, I picked the first 2-dimensional column option — just because I prefer the flat bar graphic over the 3-D look.

See the resulting bar graph below. This will rearrange which axes carry which pieces of data in the list shown below. When you're finished, click OK at the bottom. To change the layout of the labeling and legend, click on the bar graph, then click the Chart Design tab. Here, you can choose which layout you prefer for the chart title, axis titles, and legend. In my example shown below, I clicked on the option that displayed softer bar colors and legends below the chart. To further format the legend, click on it to reveal the Format Legend Entry sidebar, as shown below.

Here, you can change the fill color of the legend, which will in turn change the color of the columns themselves. To format other parts of your chart, click on them individually to reveal a corresponding Format window.

When you first make a graph in Excel, the size of your axis and legend labels might be a bit small, depending on the type of graph or chart you choose bar, pie, line, etc. Once you've created your chart, you'll want to beef up those labels so they're legible.

To increase the size of your graph's labels, click on them individually and, instead of revealing a new Format window, click back into the Home tab in the top navigation bar of Excel. Then, use the font type and size dropdown fields to expand or shrink your chart's legend and axis labels to your liking. To change the type of measurement shown on the Y axis, click on the Y-axis percentages in your chart to reveal the Format Axis window.

Here, you can decide if you want to display units located on the Axis Options tab, or if you want to change whether the Y-axis shows percentages to 2 decimal places or to 0 decimal places.

To do so, I can select the Maximum option — two fields down under Bounds in the Format Axis window — and change the value from 0.

The resulting graph would be changed to look like the one below I increased the font size of the Y-axis via the Home tab, so you can see the difference :. To sort the data so the respondents' answers appear in reverse order, right-click on your graph and click Select Data to reveal the same options window you called up in Step 3 above.

This time, click the up and down arrows, as shown below, to reverse the order of your data on the chart. If you have more than two lines of data to adjust, you can also rearrange them in ascending or descending order. To do this, highlight all of your data in the cells above your chart, click Data and select Sort, as shown below.

Basically, the same procedure is used to make all the graphs. They are enumerated sequentially below:. First, choose the data you want to represent in the graph. In this case, we will select Analyst and Datasets from the practice table:. Click on Insert on the toolbar and navigate to the Charts menu.

Select the required graph from the different types of graphs; in this case, we are making a bar graph which is basically a horizontal column graph, but you can select any graph that suits the data you are working on:. By following the above steps and varying the type of graph you select, you can make all types of graphs available in excel.

You can modify these different types of graphs like modifying a table, by specifying the data which would go into the x-axis and y-axis by right-clicking on the graph and clicking on select data, then specifying the data in the pop up that appears:.

This has been a guide to Types of Graphs in excel. Here we discussed Different types of Graphs in excel and how to create these different types of Graphs in Excel along with practical examples and a downloadable excel template.

You can also go through our other suggested articles —. Submit Next Question. By signing up, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Forgot Password? On the Recommended Charts tab, scroll through the list of charts that Excel recommends for your data, and click any chart to see how your data will look.

Use the Chart Elements , Chart Styles , and Chart Filters buttons, next to the upper-right corner of the chart to add chart elements like axis titles or data labels, customize the look of your chart, or change the data that is shown in the chart.

Copy an Excel chart to another Office program. Create a chart from start to finish. Clustered Column is great for comparing data, so I click it. Table of contents. Create a chart. Next: Add numbers in Excel Table of contents Create a chart. Excel training.