[Step-by-step] How to Create a Bar Chart in Excel?

creating bar charts in

In this article, we’ll create a bar chart in Excel. Microsoft Excel allows you to create bar charts, histograms, pie charts, and many more types of graphical representations of your tabular data.

Steps to create a bar chart in Excel

Let’s get started with this step-by-step guide to creating a bar chart for tabular data in Excel.

1. Prepare a tabular database

You need to prepare a tabular database in order to create a bar graph for it. Let us take an example of a tabular database here-

Sample Tabular Database
Sample Tabular Database

2. Creating a bar chart

We are looking forward to creating a systematic bar chart for this sales data here. Let’s see how we can do this-

Bar Chart Icon
Bar Chart Icon
  • Select any cell in the data range.
  • Go to Insert.
  • Under Charts group, select on the bar chart icon.
  • Select any bar chart type that you want to apply.
Bar Chart Types
Bar Chart Types

You can see that Excel has automatically adjusted the data and created a systematic bar graph for you, like this-

Auto-generated Bar Chart
Auto-generated Bar Chart

You can alter the bar graph settings to format the bar graph the way you want it.

Chart Elements Options
Chart Elements Options
  • Click on the bar graph.
  • Click on the green plus icon above called Chart Element.
  • Check the chart elements to view them on the chart and uncheck the ones you don’t want to view.

Customizing a bar chart

To customize a bar chart in terms of its color and style, you must-

Style & Color Options
Style & Color Options
  • Click on the bar chart.
  • Click on the paintbrush icon to view the style and color variants of the chart.
  • Select the style you like under the Style tab.
  • Choose the color combination you like under the Color tab.

This is how our fully customized bar chart looks like now-

Customized Bar Chart
Customized Bar Chart

Another way to change the style and color of a bar chart is by going to the Design tab that is available only when a bar chart is selected and selecting your desired style and color.

Conclusion

This was a complete step-by-step tutorial about creating a bar chart and customizing it completely. If you have any doubts regarding creating bar charts in Excel, drop a comment below and we will get back with an answer for all your queries!