Charts and Dashboards: Step Chart

Welcome back to our Charts and Dashboards blog series. This week, I create a Step chart.

I am analysing the profit on rentals that my imaginary salespeople secured in the first part of July. Currently, I am using a standard Line chart:

I am looking for trends, but it’s not immediately obvious where we have had periods of consistent profits and when profits have sharply increased or decreased. I would prefer to see my data like this:

On this Step chart, I can see where the increases in profit occur, and how large the increase is.

To get my chart in this format, I need to go back to my original data.

I need to create a ‘stepped’ data set – I can do this by creating a new data set. The first column steps the Date forward ( = $A3), and the second column is the Profit from the original Date ( = $B2):

This will be the first line in a 2-D Line chart. Don’t worry about the first Date or the last Profit, I am about to include them. Next, I copy the original data and paste it onto the bottom of the new dataset. This will be the second line in the 2-D Line chart:

The next step is to choose a 2-D Line chart from the Charts section of the Insert tab:

This gives me the Step chart I am looking for:

To see why it works, consider the data at one of the pivotal dates, for example Sunday 4^th July. The first half of the dataset has a Profit value of 10%, which is Saturday’s profit, giving me the starting point. The second half of the dataset has a Profit value of 13% which is Sunday’s profit. So Sunday is represented by a vertical line showing an increase of 3%. On a date where the profit doesn’t change, for example Tuesday 6^th July, the corresponding Profit in the first and second half of the data set is the same, so Tuesday is represented by a horizontal line representing one (1) day with no change.

That’s it for this week. Come back next week for more Charts and Dashboards tips.