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Home > Blog > Data Visualization > Add-ons > Microsoft Excel >

How to Create an Area Chart in Excel? Guide with Examples

An Area Chart is one of the visualization designs experts use to display trends over time among related variables in your data.

area chart in excel

The chart uses a combination of a line chart and color to display trends of key data points over time.

The Area Graph is amazingly easy to read and interpret. And it has a minimalist design, which plays a critical role in mitigating clutter.

Excel comes with pretty basic Area Charts. And this means you’ve got to spend extra time and effort editing your charts. We’re not recommending you do away with the data visualization application.

Download and install a particular add-in (which we’ll talk about later) access a ready-to-use Area Chart in Excel. Yes, you read that right.

Table of Content:

  1. Area Chart
  2. Types of Area Chart
  3. Area Chart Uses
  4. Create Area Chart in Excel
  5. Components of an Area Chart
  6. Read an Area Chart in Excel?
  7. Advantages of Area Chart in Excel
  8. Wrap Up

What is an Area Chart

An Area Chart is a visualization design that uses a line graph and color combination to display trend and pattern insights into key data points in a specified period.

The chart shares similarities with the Line Graph. In both visualization designs, key data points are connected via lines. However, the chart uses color, unlike the Line Graphs.

The Area Chart in Excel is best-suited in displaying patterns and trends of key data points.

Types of Area Chart

There are three types of Area Chart in Excel Let’s check them out.

  • Standard Area Chart

standard area chart in excel

This variant of Area Chart in Excel is best suited in displaying changes of key variables over time.

The variable depicted by the y-axis is the metric. On the other hand, the main dimension in the chart is time. For instance, the chart above displays the growth trend of units sold in the last 9 years.

  • Stacked Area Chart

stacked area chart in excel

Visualization Source: ChartExpo

A Stacked Area Chart is a visualization design you can use to display trends and patterns of two or more variables in data. Besides, it shows relationships between variables over time.

Each line in the chart is shaded from its peak to a common baseline. The top line corresponds to the aggregate value when summing across all groups.

You can use the variant of Stacked Area Chart in Excel to:

  • Track trends and patterns over time
  • Display part to whole relationships between key data point
  • Area Line Chart

area line chart in excel

You can use the Area Line Chart to plot two different data series.

This chart achieves the task (above) using a secondary Y-axis on the right-hand side. More so, you can use the Area Line Chart to display the relationship between two variables.

In other words, this chart is convenient in uncovering hidden insights into the relationship between two or more measures with different scales and measures.

Area Chart Uses

Area Chart in Excel is ideal if your goal is to display patterns and trends. Check out the practical application of the visualization design below.

  • Analyzing Yearly Sales

The Area Chart Google Sheets is ideal for displaying insights into the yearly sales data of a business.

  • Gauging the Performance

One of the best charts to track performance in a specified time is the Area Chart. As we said, the chart is ideal for tracking trends and patterns in a specified period.

  • Simple Comparison

Area Charts are effective, especially when comparing two or more metrics in your data.

Keep reading because you’ll learn how to create Area Chart in Excel in the coming sections.

How to Create Area Chart in Excel? Complete Step by Step Guide

Excel does not natively support Area Charts. In other words, one of the options available to you is plotting the graph manually, which is incredibly time-intensive.

You don’t have to undergo all this. 

Download and install a particular third-party add-in into your Excel to access ready-made Area Charts.

There are thousands of add-ins purposely designed for Excel. To simplify things, we tested over 60 data visualization-based add-ins.

We narrowed down our results based on the following factors:

  • Ease of use, cost of access
  • Quality of visualization chart
  • The size of the chart library

The Excel add-in that met all our conditions is ChartExpo.

The tool comes with ready-made charts that need minimum editing.

Let’s take a closer look at ChartExpo.

ChartExpo is an Excel-based add-in with an ultra-friendly user interface to ensure that any professional can visualize data, irrespective of their coding or programming skills.

How to create Area Chart in Excel should never throw a curveball at you. Keep reading to discover more.

Example: Standard Area Chart

This section will teach you how to visualize data using Area Chart in ChartExpo.

Install the application into your Excel by clicking this link to get started.

We’ll use Area Chart in Excel to visualize the table below.

Year Units Sale
2012 20730000
2013 39990000
2014 72290000
2015 125050000
2016 150260000
2017 169220000
2018 231220000
2019 211880000
2020 216760000
2021 217720000
  • Open your Excel and paste the table above.
  • Open the worksheet and click the Insert menu button.
  • From Insert menu click the My Apps button to access the ChartExpo add-in.
insert chartexpo in excel
  • Select ChartExpo and click the Insert button to get started with ChartExpo.
open chartexpo in excel
  • Once ChartExpo is loaded, you will see a list of charts.
list of charts in excel
  • Look for “Area Chart.”
  • Once the Chart pops up, click on its icon to get started, as shown below.
search chart in excel
  • Select the sheet holding your data and click the Create Chart From Selection button.
create chart in excel
  • Check out the final Area Chart in Excel.
area graph in excel

Insights

  • Between 2012 and 2018, the number of units sold was on a growth trend.
  • The 6-year growth peaked in 2018 before taking a nosedive.
  • There was no trend between 2019 and 2020. In other words, the quantity sold did not grow or decline.

You can also use ChartExpo Google Sheets add-in to create area chart in google sheets.

Components of an Area Chart

Check out the key components of an Area Chart in Excel.

  • Title

The title guides the audience by providing additional information about the chart.

  • Legend

The legend helps the audience to decode the variables under the display. And this means you should always include a legend in all the axes of the Area Chart.

  • Y-Axis

The y-axis is the vertical line in a Cartesian-based chart that represents the independent variables (metric).

  • X-Axis

The x-axis is the horizontal line of the Area Graph that represents the dimensional variable in your data.

How to Read an Area Chart in Excel?

  • Locate the legends and title in order to understand the context of the data story.
  • Check the x and y-axes to understand the variables under study.
  • Also, check the shape of the curve to determine the trend of the key data points in the display.

Advantages of Area Chart in Excel

  1. The Area Chart is incredibly easy to plot and interpret.
  2. Also, the chart can easily be understood by a wider variety of audiences.
  3. You can count on the Area Chart if your goal is to extract insights into bulky and complex data sets.
  4. You can use the Area Graphs to track changes in your data in a given period. The chart is strategically positioned to track minute changes in variables better than Bar Charts.

FAQs:

The Area Chart is used for?

An Area Chart is a visualization design that uses a line graph and color combination to display pattern and trend insights into key data points in a specified period.

The Area Chart in Excel is best-suited in displaying patterns and trends of key data points.

How many types of Area Charts are there?

Area Charts are visualization designs that combine a line graph and color to display trends and patterns in data.

There’re 3 main types of area charts, namely:

  • Standard Area Chart
  • Stacked Area Chart
  • Area Line Chart

All the graphs mentioned above use color to depict changes in variables.

Wrap Up

An Area Chart is one of the visualization designs experts use to display trends over time among related variables in your data. The visualization design uses a combination of a line chart and color to display trends of key data points over time.

The Area Chart in Excel is amazingly easy to read and interpret. And it has a minimalist design, which plays a critical role in mitigating clutter.

Excel is one of the handy data visualization tools among business owners and professionals worldwide. But it comes with basic Area Charts. And this means you’ve got to spend extra time and effort editing your charts.

We’re not recommending you do away with the data visualization application.

So, what’s the solution? 

We recommend you install third-party apps, such as ChartExpo, in Excel to access ready-to-use Area Charts.

ChartExpo is an add-in for Excel that’s loaded with insightful and ready-to-go Area Graphs, plus many charts. You don’t need programming or coding skills to visualize your data using the Area Chart in ChartExpo.

How to create Area Chart in Excel should never be a stressful affair.

Sign up for a 7-day free trial today to access ready-made Area Charts that are easy to interpret and visually appealing to your target audience.

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