How to Make a Comparison Chart in Excel with ChatGPT
Creating a great comparison chart in Excel used to mean wrestling with rows, columns, and settings. Now, you can use ChatGPT to do the heavy lifting, helping you structure your data and get to the visualization part much faster. We’ll walk through exactly how to combine these two tools to build clear, effective comparison charts without the usual headache.
First, Why Are Comparison Charts So Useful?
In business, you're constantly comparing things: sales team performance, marketing campaign ROI, product features, or website traffic month over month. A comparison chart is one of the fastest ways to understand relationships and differences in your data. It transforms a boring table of numbers into a clear visual story.
Visualizing data this way helps you spot trends, identify outliers, and communicate your findings to your team or stakeholders. Instead of asking people to interpret raw numbers, you can show them exactly what's happening at a glance - whether one campaign is outperforming another or if sales are trending up or down.
What You’ll Need
To follow along with this tutorial, all you need are two things:
Access to Microsoft Excel (most versions will work).
A ChatGPT account (the free version is perfectly fine for this).
Step-by-Step: Building Your Comparison Chart
Let's build a classic business chart: a comparison of monthly sales for two different products over a year. This will show us which product is performing better and highlight any seasonal trends.
Step 1: Get Your Data Organized with ChatGPT
Before you can make a chart, you need clean, well-structured data. This is where ChatGPT is incredibly helpful. You can simply ask it to generate sample data for you in a format that’s ready to be copied directly into Excel.
Head over to ChatGPT and use a prompt like this one. You can copy it directly.
Within a few seconds, ChatGPT will generate a nicely formatted table that looks something like this:
Month,Espresso Machine Sales,Coffee Grinder Sales January,22500,11200 February,21000,10500 March,24300,12800 April,23500,13100 May,26800,14500 June,28000,15200 July,27500,14800 August,29100,16500 September,31500,17200 October,33000,18500 November,38000,21000 December,45000,25500
Step 2: Transfer the Data to Excel
Now that you have your data, getting it into your spreadsheet is simple.
Highlight the entire table in the ChatGPT window and copy it (Ctrl+C or Cmd+C).
Open a new, blank workbook in Excel.
Click on cell A1 (the top-left cell).
Paste the data (Ctrl+V or Cmd+V).
Excel is smart enough to parse the comma-separated format and place everything into the correct columns. Your spreadsheet should now look clean and organized, with "Month" in column A, "Espresso Machine Sales" in column B, and "Coffee Grinder Sales" in column C.
Step 3: Create the Comparison Chart
With your data correctly formatted, creating the chart takes just a few clicks. The clustered column chart is perfect for this type of direct comparison.
Select your data range: Click on cell A1 and drag your mouse to select all of your data, including the headers (the range A1:C13).
Go to the Insert tab: At the top of Excel, click on the "Insert" menu tab.
Choose a column chart: In the "Charts" section, find the icon for "Insert Column or Bar Chart." Click on it.
Select "Clustered Column": A drop-down menu will appear. The first option under the "2-D Column" heading is "Clustered Column." This is the one you want.
Just like that, Excel will generate a chart and place it on your worksheet. You’ll immediately see the sales trends for both products side by side for each month.
Making Your Chart Clear and Professional
A default chart is a fine start, but a few small tweaks can make it much easier to read and understand.
Give a Good Title
The default title is usually something generic like "Chart Title." Click on it and change it to something descriptive. For our example, "2023 Monthly Sales: Espresso Machine vs. Coffee Grinder" is perfect.
Label Your Axes
Does the vertical axis represent dollars, units, or something else? You need to label it. Click on the chart, then click the green "+" icon that appears on the right side. Check the box for "Axis Titles." A placeholder title will appear next to the vertical (Y) and horizontal (X) axes. Change the vertical axis title to "Sales in USD" and the horizontal axis title to "Month."
Adjust Colors and Style
You can change the chart's style or color scheme to match your company's branding or simply to make it more readable. With the chart selected, look for the "Chart Design" tab at the top. Here, you can click "Change Colors" to pick from a variety of professional palettes.
Add Data Labels (Optional)
If you want to show the exact sales figures on each column, click the green "+" icon again and check the box for "Data Labels." This can be helpful but may look cluttered if you have a lot of data points. Use your judgment here.
Trying Other Comparison Chart Types
A clustered column chart isn't your only option. Depending on the story you want to tell, different chart types might work better.
1. Line Chart
A line chart is excellent for emphasizing trends and continuity over time. It makes it easy to see the upward trend in sales for both products throughout the year.
To change your chart to a line chart:
Click on your existing chart to select it.
Go to the Chart Design tab.
Click "Change Chart Type."
Select "Line" from the menu on the left and choose the first option, then click OK.
You’ll now see two lines tracking the sales performance, which highlights the growth pattern more clearly than the column chart.
2. Stacked Bar Chart
A stacked bar or column chart is useful when you want to compare individual components and see the total. For instance, this chart type would show you both the individual sales for each product and the total coffee equipment sales each month.
To create one, follow the same steps as above, but in the "Change Chart Type" menu, select "Stacked Column" or "Stacked Bar."
3. Radar Chart (Spider Chart)
Imagine you’re not comparing sales over time but comparing products across multiple features - like Camera, Battery, and Price. A radar chart is perfect for this.
Let's ask ChatGPT for another dataset:
Paste this new data into a fresh Excel sheet. Then:
Select the data range.
Go to the Insert tab.
Click the "Waterfall, Funnel, Stock, Surface, or Radar Chart" icon.
Select "Radar."
This chart gives you an at-a-glance view of which phone excels in which areas, making it a powerful tool for competitive feature analysis.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, Excel is a fantastic tool for creating detailed comparison charts, and pairing it with ChatGPT streamlines the initial process of structuring and generating data for your analysis. This combination allows you to quickly move from a question to an insight without getting stuck on manual data entry.
Working with static CSV files and manual report building in Excel is a great start, but it can become time-consuming, especially when your data is constantly changing. We created Graphed to remove this friction entirely. Instead of exporting data and building charts by hand, you can connect your business apps (like Google Analytics, Shopify, or Salesforce) and let AI build live, automated dashboards for you. Simply ask a question in plain English, and you get an interactive dashboard that updates in real-time, so you’re always making decisions based on the most current data.