In a line chart, category data is distributed evenly along the horizontal axis, and all value data is distributed evenly along the vertical axis.

It comes bundled as part of Microsoft Office and can be used to represent data in meaningful ways.

One of the most important uses of Excel is to generate graphs, also called charts.

Make Line Graph In Excel How To Make A

If you are new to Excel and do not know how to make a line graph in excel, this post will teach you how to make a line graph with pictures and illustrations.

Before we dive into understanding how to make a line graph in excel, lets understand when exactly we should use line chartsgraphs.

Contents 1 What Is Line Chart Line Graph in Excel 2 How to Make a Line Graph in Excel 3 How to Create Multiple Line Graph in Excel 4 Scatter Charts vs.

Line charts come in handy when you have to visualize a trend in data over intervals of time.

The time is often represented chronologically on the x-axis.

When you start Excel, you will be presented with rows and columns that look like this.

You can enter data in what are called cells that correspond to a particular row and column.

For example, the one highlighted in the image above is a cell, corresponding to row 1 and column 1.

By single line graph we mean a graph for data in two columns one column corresponding to x-axis and the other column corresponding to y-axis.

Lets say we wish to make a line graph for the number of male students in a college for the years 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016.

If we know the number of males for each of these years, we can enter the data against each of these years.

The data for the number of males that has been entered in column B will be represented on the y-axis when we create the line graph.

In our case, the column B for rows 1 to 8 needs to be selected.

Select the range of cells in Column A, since we want this to appear to x-axis, as shown below.

As you select the cells in Column A, note that the axis label range field is automatically updated with values, as shown below.

And voila The x-axis of the graph gets updated with the year values, as shown below.

Now that we know how to make a line graph in Excel, lets also take a look at how we can create multiple line graph in Excel.

For example, in addition to the number of males, lets say we now have one more column that gives information about the number of females in a class corresponding to the years 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016.

Just follow the same steps as illustrated in creating a single line graph above to change the numbers 1, 2, 37 to 2010, 2011, 2012,.2016.

The graph will then look like this.

Make Line Graph In Excel Series Of XY

These charts are useful to show the relationships among the numeric values in several data series, and they can plot two groups of numbers as one series of XY coordinates.

Make Line Graph In Excel For Mac