How to Make a Bar Chart in Excel

Making a bar chart in Excel is a straightforward way to compare different data categories at a glance. It’s one of the most common and effective visuals for transforming rows of numbers into a clear, understandable story. This guide walks you through how to create a simple bar chart, customize it to make your point, and use different chart types for more complex data reporting.

Why Use an Excel Bar Chart?

Before diving into the steps, it’s helpful to know when a bar chart is the right tool for the job. Bar charts excel at comparing the values of distinct categories. They answer the question, "How much?" for different groups, making it easy to see which category is the biggest, which is the smallest, and how they rank against each other.

You can use a bar chart to visualize just about anything you can count, including:

• Monthly sales figures for different products.

• Website traffic numbers from various marketing channels (e.g., Organic, Social, Direct).

• Customer survey responses split by satisfaction level.

• Marketing budget spend across different platforms.

In Excel, you'll see options for both bar charts (with horizontal bars) and column charts (with vertical bars). Technically, they are very similar. A good rule of thumb is to use a standard vertical column chart for time-series data (like sales per month) and a horizontal bar chart when you have long category names that would be hard to read if displayed vertically.

How to Make a Bar Chart in Excel: A Step-by-Step Guide

Let's create a basic bar chart to compare website traffic from different sources for a fictional online store. This kind of report helps marketers quickly see which channels are driving the most visitors.

Step 1: Get Your Data Ready

First, you need to organize your data in a clean, simple table. Excel reads this structure to understand what to plot on the chart.

Set up two columns. In the first column, list your categories (the things you are comparing). In the second column, list their corresponding numeric values. Be sure to include headers for each column - Excel will use these to automatically generate your chart title and axis labels.

Here’s our sample data:

Step 2: Select Your Data

Click and drag your mouse to highlight the entire data set you want to visualize, including the column headers ("Traffic Source" and "Sessions"). It’s important to include the headers so Excel knows how to label your chart automatically.

Step 3: Insert the Chart

With your data selected, navigate to the Insert tab on Excel’s top ribbon. In the "Charts" section, you’ll see several icons representing different chart types.

1. Find and click the icon that looks like a vertical bar chart, labeled "Insert Column or Bar Chart."

2. A dropdown menu will appear with several options under "2-D Bar" and "3-D Bar." For clarity, it’s almost always best to stick with a standard "Clustered Bar" chart under the 2-D section.

Excel will instantly generate a bar chart and place it on your worksheet. It will use your first column for the vertical axis (the categories) and your second column for the horizontal axis (the values), complete with a simple title.

Make It Your Own: Customizing Your Excel Bar Chart

The chart Excel creates is a good starting point, but some quick customizations can make it much more professional and easier to read. When you click on your chart, two new tabs will appear on the ribbon: Chart Design and Format. These tabs contain all the tools you need.

For most day-to-day tweaks, the small icons that pop up to the right of the chart are even faster.

Adding and Modifying Chart Elements

Click the green plus (+) icon to the right of your chart to add or remove key elements.

• Chart Title: The default title is usually your value column’s header (e.g., "Sessions"). Click on the title to edit it to something more descriptive, like "Monthly Website Traffic by Source."

• Axis Titles: Check this box to add labels to your horizontal and vertical axes. This clarifies what the bars and their lengths represent. For our example, you could label the bottom axis "Number of Sessions."

• Data Labels: Check this box to display the exact numeric value directly on each bar. This is incredibly useful because it saves your audience from having to guess the value based on the axis scale.

• Gridlines: These are the faint horizontal lines running behind your bars. You can uncheck this box to remove them for a cleaner, less cluttered look.

Changing Colors and Styles

Now, let's adjust the look and feel. Click the paintbrush icon (Chart Styles) next to the chart to explore different pre-made visual styles and color palettes. This is the quickest way to find a professional design.

For more specific changes:

• To change the color of the bars: Double-click on any of the bars to open the "Format Data Series" pane on the right. Here you can change the fill color and border for all bars at once. If you want to highlight a single bar, click once to select all bars, then click a second time on just the one you want to edit.

• To adjust bar spacing: In that same "Format Data Series" pane, you can adjust the "Gap Width." Decreasing this percentage will make your bars thicker and more prominent.

Sorting Your Data for Better Storytelling

One of the most effective ways to improve a bar chart is to sort the data. A chart is much easier to interpret when the bars are arranged in a logical order, such as from largest to smallest.

To do this, go back to your source data table (not the chart itself). Select the data, go to the Data tab, and click Sort. Choose to sort by "Sessions" and order from "Largest to Smallest." When you click OK, your data table will reorder, and your chart will update automatically, creating a much clearer visual hierarchy.

Going Further: Different Types of Bar Charts in Excel

As your data becomes more complex, you may need a different type of bar chart to tell the right story.

Stacked Bar Charts

A stacked bar chart is useful when you want to show how a total category is broken down into sub-categories. It allows you to compare the totals across categories while also showing the composition of each total bar.

When to use it: Imagine you want to see your website traffic sources broken down by device type (Desktop vs. Mobile). A stacked bar chart would show you the total sessions for Organic Search, for example, with a single bar showing the proportion that came from mobile versus desktop.

How to create it: Your data table would need three columns: the categories (Traffic Source), followed by columns for the sub-categories (Desktop Sessions, Mobile Sessions). Select all the data and choose "Stacked Bar" from the insert chart menu.

100% Stacked Bar Charts

This chart is similar to a stacked bar chart, but instead of showing absolute values, it shows the relative percentage of each sub-category. Each bar adds up to 100%, making it easy to compare proportions across categories.

When to use it: Using our traffic example, a 100% stacked bar chart would instantly show you that Social Media gets 70% of its traffic from mobile, while Organic Search only gets 40% from mobile. It’s perfect when you care more about the relative breakdown than the grand totals.

Clustered Bar Charts (Side-by-Side)

A clustered bar chart places bars for sub-categories next to each other, rather than on top. This is the default multi-series chart and is ideal for direct comparisons between sub-groups.

When to use it: This is best for comparing values across two different dimensions simultaneously. For example, you could compare sales of "Product A" vs. "Product B" for different regions. For each region on the axis, you would see two bars side-by-side, making the product-level comparison within each region very clean.

Tips and Best Practices for Effective Bar Charts

• Start your value axis at zero. Starting the axis at a higher number can exaggerate the differences between bars and mislead the viewer. Excel does this right by default, but it’s a critical rule to remember.

• Use color with purpose. Stick to a simple, clean color palette. If you want to draw attention to a specific bar, make it a contrasting color and keep the others a neutral gray or blue.

• Label directly. When possible, use data labels on the bars and remove the axis and gridlines. This reduces visual clutter and makes your chart easier to read.

• Keep it simple. Avoid adding too many categories or data series into a single chart. If a chart has more than 10 bars, it might be difficult to read.

• Horizontal bars for long labels. If your category names are long, switch to a horizontal bar chart to prevent text from overlapping or appearing at an awkward angle.

Final Thoughts

Creating a bar chart in Excel is an essential skill for anyone who works with data. By organizing your data correctly, choosing the right chart type, and applying thoughtful customizations, you can transform a simple spreadsheet into a professional and insightful visual that communicates a clear message.

While this manual process in Excel is powerful, it can still become a chore, especially when you need to pull data from multiple marketing or sales platforms. We spent countless hours downloading CSVs and building the same weekly reports over and over, which is exactly why we built Graphed. We connect directly to your tools like Google Analytics, Shopify, and Salesforce so you can skip the spreadsheets entirely and create real-time dashboards just by asking questions in plain English - your report is just ready when you are.