In this Excel charting tutorial, I will show you how to add a target line in an Excel chart. This is a way to compare actual performance against a goal or benchmark.
To add a target line to an Excel chart, you can use the following steps:
First, create a simple chart showing the daily sales of a company, then create a simple bar graph for the same.
Data creation
This is the daily sales data for a company. As shown in the Excel file:
Chart creation
Creating a simple bar chart from the Actual sale data:
Clicking on the 2D clustered column chart:
Now Adding target sales data for the target line creation. Right-click the chart Area and click select Data:
Click Add for the legend entries:
After clicking Add, select the series name by clicking on the cell with the name target sale and select series values from the column with target sales data:
And clicking ok:
Now the target sales are added as columns, but we can change them to a target line by right-clicking the target series and changing the chart type:
Change option for Target sale to Line:
Click Ok:
To format the target line, right-click on the line and select Format Data Series. Select the Line tab and choose the line style, color, and width you want for the target line.
To add a label to the target line, go to the Layout tab on the Excel ribbon and click on the Data Label button in the Labels group. Select the Values option to show the target value as a label on the line.
To make the target line stand out, you can change its color and style to make it more prominent. You can also add a label to the line to show the target value.
This is how to add a target line in an Excel graph trick in just a few steps.
Please find attached the Excel file or chart with the target line.
