How to Create a Line Chart in Excel

Tracking performance over time is fundamental to understanding your business, and a line chart is the perfect tool for the job. Whether you're monitoring website traffic, sales figures, or ad spend, visualizing data as a trend is the fastest way to spot what's working and what isn't. This guide will walk you through creating clear, professional-looking line charts in Excel, from a simple single-line graph to more complex charts with multiple data series.

When to Use a Line Chart

Before building one, it helps to know why you're choosing a line chart over, say, a bar chart or a pie chart. Line charts excel at one specific thing: showing a continuous trend over time. Use them when you want to answer questions like:

• How did our website sessions change month-over-month last year?
• Is our daily revenue increasing or decreasing this quarter?
• How has student enrollment changed over the last decade?

Your data points should be connected to each other, typically representing measurements at regular intervals (days, weeks, months, years). If you're comparing distinct categories (like total sales per country), a bar chart is usually a better fit.

How to Create a Single Line Chart in Excel

Let's start with the basics. We'll create a simple line chart to visualize monthly website traffic. All you need is a clean table of your data.

For this example, your data should be organized in two columns: one for the time period (x-axis) and one for the value you're tracking (y-axis).

Example Data: Monthly Website Sessions

Step 1: Set Up & Select Your Data

Make sure your data is in a simple table with clear headers. Click and drag your cursor to highlight all the cells containing your data, including the headers ("Month" and "Sessions").

Step 2: Insert the Line Chart

With your data highlighted, navigate to the Insert tab on the Excel ribbon at the top of the screen. Look for the Charts section. Click on the icon that looks like a small line graph, labeled "Insert Line or Area Chart." A dropdown menu will appear.

You’ll see several options under the "2-D Line" and "3-D Line" sections. For most business reporting, a simple Line with Markers is the clearest and most professional choice. The markers (dots, squares, etc.) represent your actual data points, while the line connects them to show the trend. Click on "Line with Markers" to create your chart.

Step 3: Check Your Chart

Excel will instantly generate the line chart and place it on your worksheet. It will intelligently place the "Month" column on the horizontal axis (the x-axis) and the "Sessions" data on the vertical axis (the y-axis). Just like that, you have a basic line chart.

Now, let's make it look more presentable.

Customizing Your Excel Line Chart for Readability

Excel's default charts are functional, but a few tweaks can turn them into clear, compelling visuals that are ready for a presentation or report.

You can format almost any element of the chart by clicking on it. When your chart is selected, two new contextual tabs will appear on the ribbon: Chart Design and Format. Alternatively, you can double-click any chart element to open a formatting pane on the right side of your screen.

Adding a Clear Chart Title

Your chart's default title will probably be the header of your value column (e.g., "Sessions"). Click on the title text box to edit it. Make it descriptive and easy to understand at a glance, like "Monthly Website Sessions - First Half of Year."

Adding Axis Titles

What do the numbers on the side and bottom mean? Don't make people guess. Make your chart clearer by adding axis titles.

1. Click anywhere on your chart to select it.
2. Click the green plus (+) icon that appears in the top-right corner of the chart. This opens the "Chart Elements" menu.
3. Check the box next to Axis Titles.
4. New text boxes will appear for the vertical and horizontal axes. Click on them to edit the text (e.g., "Number of Sessions" and "Month").

Modifying the Line and Markers

Don't like the default blue line? You can change its color, thickness, and style. Double-click the line itself to open the "Format Data Series" pane.

• Line Color & Style: Under the "Fill & Line" tab (the paint bucket icon), you can change the line's color, width (thickness), dash type (e.g., solid or dotted), and more. Try matching your company's brand colors for a professional look.
• Marker Options: Click the "Marker" section to change the appearance of the data points. You can change their color, shape (circle, square, triangle), size, and border.

Creating a Multiple-Line Chart in Excel

Often, you’ll want to compare two or more trends on the same chart. For example, let's compare "Total Sales" versus "Ad Spend" on a monthly basis. Creating a multi-line chart is just as easy.

Step 1: Arrange Your Data

The key to a good multi-line chart is data organization. Your first column should always be your time-based label (the x-axis). Subsequent columns should each represent a data series you want to plot.

Example Data: Sales vs. Ad Spend

Step 2: Highlight and Insert

Just as before, highlight the entire data set, including all headers. Go to the Insert tab > Insert Line or Area Chart > Line with Markers.

Excel will automatically create a chart with two lines - one for "Total Sales" and one for "Ad Spend." It will also add a Legend to the chart, which identifies which line corresponds to which data set. You can click and drag the legend to move it to a different position (top, bottom, left, etc.).

Pro Tips for Better Line Charts

Use a Secondary Axis for Different Scales

What if you want to plot Website Sessions (in the tens of thousands) against Conversion Rate (a small percentage)? Putting them on the same vertical axis would make the conversion rate line look completely flat. The solution is a Secondary Axis.

• Create your two-line chart as usual.
• Right-click the line you want to move to a second axis (e.g., Conversion Rate).
• Select Format Data Series from the menu.
• In the "Series Options" part of the pane that opens, select Secondary Axis. A new vertical axis will appear on the right side of your chart scaled for that data series.

Add a Trendline for Forecasts

Want to see the overall direction your data is heading? Add a trendline to smooth out the noise.

• Click on your chart, then click the green plus (+) icon.
• Hover over Trendline and click the small arrow that appears.
• You can add a Linear trendline or other types like Exponential or Moving Average. You can also specify a simple forecast by setting a number in the "Forecast" > "Forward" periods box.

Managing Gaps / Missing Data

If you have empty cells in your data, Excel will create a gap in your line chart by default. If you'd prefer to connect the line or show the missing value as zero, right-click your chart, click Select Data, then click the Hidden and Empty Cells button and choose your preferred option.

Final Thoughts

Excel line charts are a powerful and straightforward way to show trends and tell stories with your data. By starting with a clean data table and taking a few moments to customize titles, labels, and colors, you can create professional reports that are easy for anyone on your team to understand.

While building charts in Excel is a great skill, the biggest time-sink is often the tedious, manual work of downloading CSVs and preparing that data in the first place. We created Graphed because pulling data from platforms like Shopify, Google Analytics, and Facebook Ads shouldn't take hours. By directly connecting your data sources, we help you automate reporting and build live dashboards instantly with simple, plain-English commands, giving you that time back to focus on insights, not manual data wrangling.