How to Utilize Charts in Excel

Excel is the primary spreadsheet builder and is tremendously valuable to your business. Spreadsheets are perfect for showcasing information in a compact manner, but without a couple of charts, your users will just be staring at cell after cell of dull old numbers. By using charts in Excel, you can take your spreadsheet building to the next level.

Choose Your Chart
Excel is equipped with built-in chart types that you can select from, with many of the more complex ones being a little difficult to use for normal business purposes. You can effortlessly get your point across with a simple column, pie, or line chart.

Using Column/Bar Charts
Column charts are most efficient when you need to show how much data has changed over a specific period of time. You can also use them to compare values at a single data point. For example: you could use a column chart to show the revenue earned by individual sales people.

You utilize a bar chart to do mostly the same thing as a column chart, only it’s horizontal rather than vertical. These are very convenient in showing significant discrepancies between data, or when you need to label your points.

Using Pie Charts
A pie chart is magnificent if you need to compare percentages according to a group of data. For example: you are tracking how new clients say they became aware your company. You can break them out into a pie chart to compare and visually explain the bigger slices.

Using Line Charts
You can utilize a line chart to view how your data changes over time, as it allows you to showcase multiple data trends simultaneously. 

Constructing the Charts
Excel has a convenient chart building tool that you can utilize to showcase data from a spreadsheet. First, make sure your data is properly organized in the spreadsheet. Next, highlight what data you want to show in your chart.

When this has been done, simply select the chart type that you want to use. You can do so either in the list of Recommended Charts, or from the list of All Charts. Then see your new chart appear. You can further customize your chart by using Chart Elements, Chart Styles, and Chart Filters.

You can utilize other options to further customize your chart, and with some improvisation, you can build a chart that both accurately represents your data and gets your point across in the most effective way possible.

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