Excel Chart Maker

How the Chart Is Built From Your Rows

You choose a category column, a value column, an aggregation, and a type. Every data row is read, its category cell is trimmed to a label, and rows sharing a label are grouped together - so you chart a raw export directly, without a summary table first. The value column of each group is then reduced to one number: Sum adds the numeric cells, Average divides that total by how many cells parsed as numbers, and Count ignores the value column's contents and counts the non-blank cells in it. Bars appear in the order the labels were first seen in the sheet, not sorted by size.

What Counts as a Number

Before summing or averaging, a text value has currency symbols, thousands separators, percent signs, and spaces stripped, so $1,200 contributes 1200. Anything still unparseable - N/A, pending - is skipped rather than treated as zero, which means an average is taken over the numeric cells only. A group whose value cells are all non-numeric charts as zero. Percentages are a trap here: 45% becomes 45, so do not mix formatted percentages with decimal fractions in one column.

Edge Cases and Limits

Rows whose category cell is blank are dropped entirely - they never become an (blank) bar. Category labels are compared exactly after trimming, so West and west are two separate bars; normalize case in Excel Data Cleaner first if that matters. There is no top-N limit, so a category column with hundreds of distinct values produces hundreds of narrow bars that run past the edge of the 760-pixel canvas: filter or group your data down to roughly 5-25 categories for a readable chart. The vertical axis is drawn as a line without tick labels, the chart title is the sheet name, and dates on the category axis chart as their underlying Excel serial number - group by a month or quarter text column instead.

Two Different Downloads

Download SVG gives you the chart as a standalone vector image with fixed fallback colors, so it renders correctly outside this site - drop it into a document, a slide, or a web page, and it stays sharp at any size. Download Chart Data gives you a workbook with two columns, Label and Value, holding the aggregated numbers behind the picture. That second file is the one to use when you want a native Excel chart: open it, select both columns, and Insert a chart in Excel over the top.

When a Different Tool Fits Better

If you want the grouped numbers themselves rather than a picture - or you need a second dimension across the top - use the Pivot Table Generator, which performs the same aggregation and adds a column field and totals. For schedule bars driven by start and end dates, see Gantt chart in Excel. To capture an existing formatted sheet as a picture rather than build a new chart, use Excel to Image. And if a bar comes out unexpectedly short, run Excel Data Profiler over the value column - a mixed type there means some of your numbers are text and are being skipped.