Excel 2010 Bible

Chapter 18: Getting Started Making Charts

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Line

Line charts are often used to plot continuous data and are useful for identifying trends. For exam-

ple, plotting daily sales as a line chart may enable you to identify sales fluctuations over time.

Normally, the category axis for a line chart displays equal intervals. Excel supports seven line chart

subtypes.

See Figure 18.18 for an example of a line chart that depicts daily sales (200 data points). Although

the data varies quite a bit on a daily basis, the chart clearly depicts an upward trend.

On the CD
A workbook that contains the charts in this section is available on the companion CD-ROM. The file is named
line charts.xlsx.

The final line chart example, shown in Figure 18.20, is a 3-D line chart. Although it has a nice

visual appeal, it’s certainly not the clearest way to present the data. In fact, it’s fairly worthless.

A line chart can use any number of data series, and you distinguish the lines by using different col-

ors, line styles, or markers. Figure 18.19 shows a line chart that has three series. The series are dis-

tinguished by markers (circles, squares, and diamonds) and different line colors.

FIGURE 18.18

A line chart often can help you spot trends in your data.