How to Put Multiple Graphs in One Figure in Excel

Putting one clean, clear chart in a report is good, but combining several related graphs into a single, cohesive figure is how you start telling a real data story. Instead of making your audience jump between different visuals, you can present a complete picture - like marketing spend, website traffic, and sales results - all in one place. This article will walk you through three different methods for putting multiple graphs in one figure in Excel, from a simple copy-paste approach to creating a dynamic, dashboard-style view.

Why Combine Graphs in the First Place?

Before we get into the "how," let's quickly cover the "why." Consolidating your charts isn't just about saving space, it's about providing context and making your data much easier to understand.

• Better Comparisons: Placing charts side-by-side is the easiest way for you and your team to compare trends and results. Are your Facebook ad campaign clicks and your website traffic moving in the same direction? Seeing them together makes the answer obvious.

• Holistic Storytelling: Data rarely lives in a vacuum. A spike in sales might be directly related to a recent email marketing campaign. By showing charts for email opens, click-through rates, and Shopify revenue in one figure, you connect the dots and tell the full story.

• Simplified Dashboards: For many teams, a simple dashboard right in Excel is all they need. Combining key charts on a single sheet gives everyone a quick, at-a-glance view of performance without needing a complex business intelligence tool.

• Cleaner Reports: A single, well-organized figure with multiple graphs looks far more professional in a presentation or report than a dozen separate, scattered charts. It shows you've thought about how to best present the information.

Method 1: Arrange and Group Chart Objects

This is the most direct and common method. It involves creating your charts as individual objects and then arranging and grouping them on a dedicated worksheet so they behave like a single image. It's perfect for creating a static "dashboard" sheet that you can screenshot or include in a report.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Create Your Individual Charts: First, build each chart you need. For example, you might create a line chart for your monthly website traffic on one sheet, a bar chart for your monthly sales on another, and a pie chart for your traffic sources. Get each one looking exactly how you want it, with the right titles, labels, and colors.

2. Move Charts to a Dashboard Sheet: Designate a clean, blank worksheet as your "Dashboard" or "Figure" sheet. To move a chart, right-click its border and select Move Chart. In the pop-up, choose "Object in:" and select your dashboard sheet from the dropdown menu. Repeat for all your graphs.

3. Arrange and Resize: Now, click and drag your charts on the dashboard sheet to get them roughly into the grid or layout you want. For more precise resizing, hold down the Alt key while you drag the corners or sides of a chart. This will "snap" the chart's border to the worksheet's cell grid, making it much easier to size your charts identically.

4. Use Alignment Tools for a Clean Look: This is the pro-tip that separates messy dashboards from clean ones. Hold down the Shift key (or Ctrl on Windows) and click the border of each chart object to select them all. With all charts selected, go to the Shape Format (or Chart Format) tab that appears in the ribbon. Under the "Arrange" section, click Align. You can use tools like "Align Top," "Align Middle," and "Distribute Horizontally" to get them perfectly lined up with pixel-perfect precision.

5. Group the Charts into One Figure: Once they're perfectly aligned, right-click on any of the selected charts and go to Group > Group. Excel will now treat all your separate charts as a single object. You can move, resize, or copy-paste the entire figure as one block, which is incredibly convenient.

6. Add an Overall Title: Since these are still technically separate charts, there's no single title for the whole figure. The best way to add one is by inserting a text box. Go to Insert > Text > Text Box, draw a box above your grouped charts, and type your main figure title (e.g., "Q3 Marketing & Sales Performance Overview").

Best for: Creating static, dashboard-style views for reports and presentations where you need to arrange several distinct charts in a specific layout.

Method 2: Create a Combination Chart

What if you want to show two different types of data on the same chart? For example, you want to display your revenue in bars and your profit margin as a line, all on one graph. For this, you need a Combination (or "combo") Chart. This method merges different data series into a single chart, often using a secondary axis for data with different scales.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Set Up Your Data Correctly: For a combo chart to work, your data must share a common category. Most often, this is a time period. Arrange your data in columns, with the shared category on the far left. For example: Month, Revenue, Profit Margin %.

2. Insert a Combo Chart: Select your entire data range, including the headers. Go to the Insert tab, and in the Charts section, click the small icon for "Insert Combo Chart." Excel will often suggest a good starting point like a "Clustered Column - Line" chart.

3. Customize the Chart Types and Axes: In the "Insert Chart" dialog box, you'll see your data series listed with dropdown menus next to each. Here, you can define what each part of the chart should be.

   • For Revenue, you might choose "Clustered Column."

   • For Profit Margin %, a "Line" would make sense.

4. Use a Secondary Axis: This is the key step. Your revenue is in large dollar amounts, while your margin is a small percentage. If you plot them on the same axis, the margin line will look completely flat near the bottom. To fix this, check the Secondary Axis box for the Profit Margin % series. This creates a new vertical axis on the right side of the chart scaled just for the percentage values, allowing both the bars and the line to be clearly visible.

5. Finalize and Format: Click OK to create the chart. Now you can clean it up. Add a clear chart title (e.g., "Monthly Revenue and Profit Margin"), and make sure both your primary and secondary axes are clearly labeled so people know what each line and bar represents.

Best for: Visualizing the relationship between two different data series that have different units or scales (like volume and percentage) over the same period.

Method 3: The Dynamic "Camera Tool" for Dashboards

This is a lesser-known but incredibly powerful technique for creating polished, dynamic dashboards. The Camera Tool in Excel lets you take a "live picture" of a range of cells. This means if the data or the chart in the original cells changes, the picture updates automatically. This is perfect for building a clean main figure on one sheet that is fed by charts you've built on another.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Add the Camera to Your Toolbar: The Camera Tool isn't in the ribbon by default. You need to add it to your Quick Access Toolbar (the small icons at the very top of your Excel window).

   • Right-click on the ribbon and select Customize the Ribbon... (or Quick Access Toolbar).

   • In the dropdown labeled "Choose commands from:", select All Commands.

   • Scroll down the list to find the Camera command. Select it and click the Add button to move it to the right-hand panel.

   • Click OK. You should now see a small camera icon in your toolbar.

2. Create Your Charts on a "Source" Sheet: Go to a separate sheet (let's call it "Source Data") and create your charts. This sheet can be your workspace, it doesn't have to be perfectly organized.

3. Take a "Picture" of Your First Chart: On your Source Data sheet, select the cells around your first chart. Make sure the entire chart is contained within the selected range of cells.

4. Click the Camera Icon: With the cells selected, simply click the Camera icon in your Quick Access Toolbar. Your cursor will turn into a crosshair.

5. Place the Linked Picture: Go to your clean "Dashboard" sheet and click once where you'd like the top-left corner of the chart image to be. Excel will paste a linked picture of your chart. You can resize, move, and format this picture as you wish. Best of all, if you go back and change the underlying data for that chart, the linked picture on your dashboard will update instantly.

6. Repeat for All Other Charts: Follow the same process for your other charts - select the cells on the source sheet, click the Camera, and paste the linked picture onto your dashboard sheet. Now you can arrange these dynamic pictures just like in Method 1, using the alignment and grouping tools to create a single, clean figure.

Best for: Creating a clean, summary dashboard on one sheet that pulls from charts and data on other sheets, while keeping everything dynamically linked.

Final Thoughts

Combining multiple graphs in Excel transforms a simple spreadsheet into a powerful reporting tool. Whether you're arranging separate charts into one visual group, building an integrated combo chart, or creating a dynamic dashboard with the Camera tool, you are providing the context needed for better and faster decisions. These methods give you the flexibility to tell a complete and compelling data story every time.

While mastering these Excel techniques is a fantastic skill for creating reports, keeping all that data updated and rebuilding figures can be a time-consuming manual process. That's precisely why we built Graphed. We wanted to connect directly to live data sources like Google Analytics, Shopify, and Facebook Ads, so you never have to download a CSV file again. You can create real-time, multi-graph dashboards instantly just by describing what you want to see in plain language - allowing you to focus on the insights, not on the tedious work of wrangling charts.