The regular 2-D area chart is better suited for cases where you have two types of the dataset (an overall data set and a subset).įor example, suppose you have a dataset as shown below (where I have shown the Overall sales of the company and the Printer sales): In such a case, a stacked area chart or a 100% stacked area chart is more suited (covered later in this tutorial). The above chart has data for Printers, Projectors, and White Boards, but only the data for White Boards is visible as it more than the rest two categories. If you use this data to create an area chart, you may end up getting a chart as shown below (where we have plotted three types of data, but you only see one color). The problem with this type of chart is that there is always an overlap in the colors plotted on the chart.įor example, if you have a dataset as shown below: This is just like a line chart with colors. Let’s see how to create each of these and in which scenario which one should be used. There are three in-built types of area charts available in Excel: Now let’s see how to create an area chart in Excel and some examples where area charts can be useful. While it’s the same data, using an area chart, in this case, makes the overall contribution stands out. In the above chart, we can see that Printer B (represented by the orange color) has the maximum contribution to the overall sales. In case you’re only interested in showing the trend, using a line chart is a better choice (especially if the charts are to be printed).įor example, in the below case, you can use a line chart (instead of an area chart)Īrea charts are useful when you have multiple time series data and you also want to show the contribution of each data set to the whole.įor example, suppose I have three product lines of Printers (A, B, and C).Īnd I want to see how the sales have been in the past few years as well as which printer line has contributed how much to the overall sales, using an area chart is a better option. An area chart is similar to a line chart with one difference – the area below the line is filled with a color.īoth – a line chart and an area chart – show a trend over time.
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