How To Make A Chart In Google Sheets

In this tutorial, you will learn how to make a chart in google sheets.

Charts and graphs make it easier to visualize and interpret data, so it’s no wonder they’re common tools in the workplace. It may not at first seem obvious how to generate a chart from your data, but fortunately Google Sheets comes with a number of preset chart options that make it quick and easy to generate charts

Inserting a Chart

For this example, we’ll use a pie chart, but there are many different types of charts you can make in Google Sheets so don’t worry if you want to use a different type of chart. You can always choose a different type of chart while following these steps.

Step 1

Select the data you want to chart and open the Insert menu, then choose Chart. For this example, we’re using a column of locations and column of sales numbers to generate our pie chart

Step 2

Google Sheets will look at the data you provided and try to select a chart type to match it. To change the chart type, go to the Chart Editor sidebar and select the appropriate chart from the Chart Type dropdown

Step 3

The chart type will update, but you may need to make additional changes in the chart editor to achieve the desired look. For instance, the auto-generated pie chart shows each datapoint as a separate slice of the pie, but we want to aggregate the data from the different locations. To do this, we’ll select the City header under the Label section of the Chart Editor, then check the box to Aggregate the values by City

Step 4

The pie chart will immediately update to show any changes made in the Chart Editor

Making Changes to Your Chart

Google Sheets charts are inserted as floating elements above the cells. If you want to reposition the chart, simply click on it and drag it to the desired position

If you want to change the chart type or make other edits to the chart’s appearance, follow these steps:

Step 1

Click on the chart to select it and a 3-dot menu icon will appear in the upper right corner. Open the menu by clicking on the dots and choose Edit Chart from the menu

Step 2

In the Chart Editor, make the desired edits, then click the X in the upper right corner to close the editor when you’re done

Summary

Example Spreadsheet: Make a copy of the example spreadsheet

In this tutorial, I covered how to make a chart in google sheets. Want more? Check out all the Google Sheets Tutorials.