How to create a simple percent change column chart in Google Sheets
The requirements for your Tablet Wars project require you to make three graphs of your own data
showing your business results over our simulated eight years of the project.
The second is a chart showing the percent change of your net worth over eight years. I will show you
how to produce this graph in this document.
For this document, I have used Google Sheets. If you would like to use Microsoft Excel to create your
charts, see the other set of documents which is specific to Excel.
If you enter your data exactly in the columns as I detail below, your graph should look just like mine.
When I use this type of naming structure – “C2:C10” – it means a range of cells from C2 through C10.
Step 1: You can use the same spreadsheet to create this graph that you used to create your net
worth graph.
You should already have columns A
and B entered.
a. Format cells B2:B10 as type
currency, with zero decimal places.
b. Format cells C2:C01 as type
percent with zero decimal places.
c. Click in cell C3 and enter this
Figure 1
formula: =(B3 – B2)/B2
Remember, this is (new – old)/old!
See figure 1. Press the “Enter” or the “Tab” key and you should see the results of your percent
change calculation.
d. Now we’ll copy your formula into the
remaining cells. Click in cell C3 again and
move your cursor to the bottom-right of the cell
where the black square is (see figure 2).
e. Left-click on that square and drag down to
cell C10. When you release your “left click,” you
should see the formula calculated for all cells.
See figure 3.
Figure 2
Figure 3
Step 2: Create the percent change graph.
a. Copy the entire "Year" column so that there
is a duplicate year column between the "Net
Worth" column and the "Percent change"
column. To do this, right click in the head of
column C and choose "Insert 1 left", then copy
and paste values from column A. See figure 4.
Figure 4
b. Select cells C1:D10 by clicking in cell C1 and shift-clicking in D10.
b. Click on “Insert chart” on the tool bar across the top of your Sheets window. A new window will
open up as in Figure 5. Choose “Chart
types” from the middle tab across the
top. Scroll down and choose “column
chart” as in figure 5 (and as we did in
the first graph).
c. Click “Insert” to close the window
and your chart will be inserted into
your sheet.
Figure 5
To finish up your graph, you may want to delete the field which shows the “Legend” to the right of the
graph. Just click on it and then press the delete key. Also, you need to change the title of your graph
so that it includes the name of your Company.
This graph shows how much your company grew from one year to the next. You will likely have
some percent change less than zero.
That’s it! This one’s not any harder than the last one! Try playing around with some different features
of Excel’s charting tools. I also like the 3D type of graphs and a different color than blue might be
nice.
See the 03-Profit-Loss_Linear_Equation to graph your linear equation.