How to Create and Manage Diagrams in Excel (Formulas)

Excel is the most popular spreadsheet software in the world. It is used all across the industry to store and process different types of data. Industries, businesses, and organizations use it to present their data in a graphical form such as diagrams, charts, pie-charts, shapes, and flow charts. Raw spreadsheet data is usually understood by the experts, so Excel has plenty of options to transform this data into intuitive graphs and diagrams so that it could be understood by a wider audience. This article will guide you in creating and editing all sorts of diagrams in Excel.

Selecting a Perfect Diagram Type for Your Data

Excel allows its user to choose from a whole host of options when it comes to diagrams and charts. Different types of diagrams are appropriate for different types of datasets, it is important to select a diagram template which best describes the purpose of the data. It is often a good practice to try several diagram templates to see which one works best for a certain scenario. Once a diagram type is selected, it can be further customized using Excels easily to use toolbars. Various types of diagrams and their uses are listed below.

Pie Diagrams

These types of diagrams are generally used to show percentages. Different percentages are shown as a piece of the pie. Sum of all the pie values equal to 100%. Pie diagrams have five variants, simple pie, 3D pie, doughnut-shaped, pie of pie, and a bar of the pie. Latter two types divide a certain pie portion into its sub-categories.

Column and Bar Diagrams

These are the very versatile type of diagrams. They show a comparison between different data categories. This type of diagram is very useful when there is a lot of data to compare such as the number of sales in the last ten years. There are many options available for column diagram in Excel such as: clustered and 3D clustered; stacked, hundred percent stacked, 3d stacked and 3d hundred percent stacked; and 3d column. Moreover, the bar and column type have the same functionality. The only difference is the direction of the column. Bar graphs show data horizontally whereas columns display it vertically. Bar type is preferred when the data have negative values and the positive and negative values are needed to be compared.

Line and Scatter Diagrams

Line charts are suitable for places where you need to show the overall trend in the data, they are like waveforms. Every data point is connected by a line showing ups and downs in the data. The types of the line chart include simple line, line with markers, stacked lines, and 3d line. Similarly, the scatter charts also show trends over time. They are specifically useful for showing correlation when one piece of data affects another piece of data.

In addition, there are other diagrams that are equally important such as area, surface, stoke, histogram, tree, box and whiskers, radar, and waterfall. Similarly, Excel offers other diagram options apart from chart-based diagrams. They include shapes, pictures, smart-art, pivot charts, and 3d maps.

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