Change Chart Style in Excel

How to Change Chart Style in Excel?

We all know how charts are effective in telling the story better than the data table alone itself. Creating a chart is easy but in order to make the chart more effective it boils down to the formatting of the chart. Formatting is like beautifying the chart and those who format the chart will be the most demanded beautician in the corporate world. One of such beautification is to “Changing the Chart Style” of an existing chart. In this article, we will show you how to change the chart style in excel effectively.

Steps to Change Excel Chart Style

Assume you have a data set like the below one.

Instead of showing up this data as a table let’s insert some visualization to make it more attractive to the user.

Select the data and insert the COLUMN chart.

This is the default chart we get when we insert the column chart for the selected data range. Most of the people do not go beyond this step because they don’t care about the beauty of the chart.

However, adding beauty to the chart will definitely catch the eye attention of the users. So first we need to change the colors of the column bars to different colors.

In 2010 and earlier versions we need to change each column bar colors individually, but from the 2013 version onwards we have this option called “Vary Color by point”.

Select the bars and press Ctrl + 1 to open the FORMAT DATA SERIES option.

In the FORMAT DATA SERIES window choose FILL option, click on FILL and check the box “Vary color by point”.

Now we need to apply some theme or different style to the chart. For this, we need to follow below simple steps.

Step 1: Select the chart first.

Step 2: As soon as you select the chart we can two extra tabs open up on the ribbon.

We can see the main heading as “Chart Tools” and under this, we have two tabs i.e. “Design” and “Format”.

Step 3: Go to the DESIGN tab. Under this, we can see many design options. Go to the “Chart Style” section.

Step 4: As we can see under chart style, we can see many designs. As per our current style of the chart, the first one will appear.

In Excel 2013 we have a total of 16 chart styles. Click on the drop-down list of the chart style to see the list.

There is no specific name to each chart style rather these styles are referred to as “Style 1”, “Style 2”, and “Style 3” and so on.

We will see each style of how they look when we apply them.

Style 1: To Apply only Grid Lines.

If you choose the first style it will display only GRIDLINES to the chart. Below is the preview of the same.

Style 2: To Show Data Labels in Vertical way

Data Labels are nothing but the data or numbers of each column bar. If you select the Style 2 option we will get below chart style.

Style 3: To Apply Shaded Column Bars

This style will modify the style of the bars from plain to shades. Below is the preview of the same.

Note: Data Labels do not default in this style since we have selected the Style 2 in the previous step it has come automatically.

Style 4: To Apply Increased Width of Column Bars and Shadow of Column Bars.

This style will increase the width of the column bars and also gives the shadow of each column bar.

Style 5: To Apply Grey Background.

This style will apply a grey background to Style 4.

Style 6: To Apply Light Color to the Column Bars.

This style will apply light colors to the column bars.

Style 7: To Apply Light Gridlines.

This style will apply light grid lines to the chart.

Style 8: To Apply rectangular Gridlines.

This style will apply a rectangular box type of gridlines with shades.

Style 9: To Apply Black Background.

This style will apply a dark black colored background.

Style 10: To Apply Smoky Bottom to the Column Bars.

This style will apply the bottom of each column bar as smoky.

Style 11: To Apply only borders to the Column Bars.

This style will apply only outside borders to the column bars.

Style 12: Similar to Style 1.

This style is similar to Style 1.

Style 13: To Apply Classy Style Type 1

This style will make the chart more beautiful like below.

Style 14: To Apply Classy Style Type 2

This style will make the chart more beautiful like below.

Style 15: To Apply Increased bar without Gridlines

This style will remove gridlines but increase the width of the column bars.

Style 16: To Apply Intense Effect to the Column Bars

This style will apply the Intense Effect for the column bars.

Things to Remember

• Each style is different from each other.
• Always chose simple styles.
• Never go beyond fancy styles especially in business presentations.

Recommended Articles

This has been a guide to Change Chart Style in Excel. Here we discuss step by step how to change chart style in excel along with examples & downloadable excel template. You may also look at these useful articles on excel –

• Table Styles in Excel
• How to Add Filter in Excel?
• Create Tornado Chart in Excel
• Create Control Charts in Excel