One of the useful tricks to attain the attention of the audience and improve the effect of presenting your data is to use axis label formatting customized for the specific value ranges:

Nowadays, icons, logos, and abbreviations often carry more information than the textual names of companies, brands, applications, games, etc. To create memorable charts and faster understanding and recognition of information, instead of the names of countries, brands, etc., you can substitute the corresponding pictures on the axis of the charts.

To show progress, highlight current or any date, or demonstrate the difference between the target value and the actual one, you can add bullets to the chart, horizontal or vertical lines:

Periodical processes like the volume of support service calls often have critical zones that indicate a severe problem that needs to be investigated and mitigated. This tip shows how to reveal and emphasize those critical zones for analysis.

Since our school times, we became familiar with drawing charts with arrows on the axes, but in Excel charts, the axes are just lines. You can customize them differently: change their width, color, and transparency; hide any axis or its labels; add the secondary horizontal or vertical axis; add, hide, or display a part of axes labels; etc.

Gantt chart is a pervasive project management tool intended to reveal task management problems. Besides creating tasks on the Gantt chart, you can enrich it with additional information like project milestones, presentation dates, and similar events.

For certain chart types, you can add error bars to your chart. Error bars often are used to indicate "plus or minus" information that reflects uncertainty in the data.

A bullet graph (the name by its inventor Stephen Few) or bullet chart (in Microsoft office) generally is used to display progress towards the specific target:

Excel offers many different charts, but for some data, pre-defined charts such as area or line charts seem fine but are inaccurate by definition. For example, changes in prices, invested amounts, or any discrete data happen at some regular or irregular points, but the value remains constant between the points:

A trend line (or trendline, also known as a line of best fit) is a straight or curved line on a chart that shows a general pattern or the general direction of the data. The trend line displays the approximated values obtained using some mathematical function. The choice of function for constructing a trend line is usually determined by the nature of the data.