How to add a vertical line to the scatter chart

Vertical lines are usually added to the chart to highlight the current date, a critical date, or a deadline. There are many ways to add a vertical line to the existing chart. Errors bars are the easiest way to add a vertical line to a scatter plot. See how to add a vertical line to a line or bar chart or a horizontal line to a scatter plot, line, or column chart:

Customize the horizontal axis labels

Excel provides very few options for formatting horizontal axis labels. You cannot format different axis labels with different colors or font sizes. Conditional formatting also only works in some cases. You need to implement some tricks to format the horizontal axis, for example:

Simple combination chart

Sometimes you want to show a single chart with a series of different chart types. These charts containing data series with different chart types for each of them (lines, columns, areas, scatter, etc.) are called combo or combination charts:

Bubble chart

The most popular charts display data in one (as a pie chart, radar, or spider chart) or two dimensions (any type of line chart or scatter plot). If you need to display data in three dimensions, you can use 3D charts or bubble charts.

Customize the vertical axis labels

Excel provides very few options for formatting vertical axis labels. All axis labels are a single object - you can change the font size and color or apply effects to all labels at the same time. Even the gradient fill with the color of the axis labels works for us as for the whole item and not for individual objects.

Bubble and Area chart

Combination charts are a great opportunity to create a really creative and memorable data presentation. Unfortunately, you can't choose the Bubble chart as an alternative chart type for line, area, etc. charts in the Change Chart Type dialog box (see Using two axes in the one chart). This tip shows how to combine two different chart types into one chart.

Glossy Gantt chart with a vertical line

If you need to create a simple Gantt chart, see Creating a Gantt chart or Gantt chart with progress. To add events to your Gantt chart, see Progress Gantt chart with events. This tip will help you to extend those charts by a vertical line that shows the current date.

How to create a break-even chart in Excel

A revenue the company generates from selling the products or providing the services should cover the fixed costs, variable costs, and leave a contribution margin. The point where the total operating margin (the difference between the price of the product or service and the variable costs per item or customer) covers the fixed costs is called a break-even point.

How to create Waterfall chart

The waterfall chart, also known as the cascade or bridge chart, shows the positive or negative change of the initial value under the influence of various factors, such as time. The main purpose of this chart is to show the viewer how the value has increased or decreased over a certain period or under the influence of certain factors:

How to add a horizontal line to the chart

Usually, horizontal lines are added to a chart to highlight a target, threshold, limits, base, average, or benchmark. These lines, for example, can help control if a process is behaving differently than usual. Excel allows you to add a vertical line to an existing chart in several different ways, e.g., by calculating line values for a scatter, line, or column chart, but using error bars is the easiest way to add a vertical line to a chart: