Line chart
A line chart joins points in order, almost always over time, to show how a number changes: whether it rises, falls or repeats every season.
Select any words here to ask your Maestro about them.
A costume shop's sales fell 62% from October to November. What should you look at before you worry?
What it's for: seeing how a number changes over time: whether it rises, falls, stalls or repeats every season. The eye follows the slope.
When not to: to compare categories with no order (branches, products), use a bar chart. To see whether two numbers move together, use a scatter plot.
If your data has seasons, compare each month with the same month a year earlier, as in the figure, not just with the month before. To measure the change, use percent change. In Excel: select your data, then Insert › Line Chart.
Practice it in When to use a line chart? Showing change over time.
How it's used
How to make it in Excel
Months in A, 2025 in B, 2024 in C
- A1: Month, B1: 2025, C1: 2024; one month per row, January to December.Time runs top to bottom; on the chart it runs left to right.
- Select A1:C13 › Insert › Line ChartExcel draws one line per column: one per year.
- marked: Against the same month last year: =(B12-C12)/C12 = 6%November 2025 against November 2024: the monthly drop was seasonal.
- Put the year at the end of each line instead of a legend, and keep it to four lines at most.More than that turns into spaghetti.
When to look closer
When Excel squeezes months that aren't next to each other
Format Axis › Axis Type
- Text axis: Jan, Apr, May, Jun, evenly spaced
Your data jumps from January to April. Do you think Excel leaves that gap in the chart?
Ask your Maestro about Line chart
It answers from the free course page closest to this word, the way it answers while you study.
You: What does "Line chart" mean, in plain words?
Your Maestro: I'll explain it with a case of yours: it sticks better than a definition. Which number at work has seasons that repeat every year?
Asking about: Answers from the page "When to use a line chart? Showing change over time"
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Related terms
- Bar chart
A bar chart compares amounts across categories: each bar is a category and its length is the number. Use it to see which branch sold the most.
- Scatter plot
A scatter plot draws one dot per case, with one variable on each axis, to show whether two numbers move together: when one goes up, does the other go up, go down, or do nothing?
- Percent change
Percent change says how much a number moved relative to where it started: (new − old) ÷ old × 100. If sales go from $80K to $100K, they're up 25%.