Subscribe73 Free Designer Quality Excel Chart Templates - Grab now and become a charting superman
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How many times you created a chart in Microsoft excel and formatted it for minutes (and sometimes hours) to reduce the eye-sore?
Well, I will tell you my answer, its 293049430493 times 
Worry not! for you can become a charting superman (or elastigirl) by using these 73 free designer quality chart templates in literally no time (well, almost)
These templates will take care of typical formatting activities like,
- Remove that ugly Grey color background from the chart
- Change the default grid line format from intrusive solid black to a duller shade of dotted Grey
- Adjust the fonts (to verdana in this case), remove annoying chart auto-font-scaling
- Move the legend to a meaningful location and adjust its size
- And, ofcouse, fix the colors
so that you, the user can focus on your data and not on “why in the world anyone would design a default format like this…”, so go ahead and unleash the charting pro in you.
Download the free MS Excel chart / graph templates
Click here to download the templates
If you are wondering how to use these templates, scroll all the way down the post 
More Charting Resources
Excel Dashboards - Tutorials & Downloads
Free Excel Downloads
Charts and Graphs
1. Bar / Column Chart Templates:
(29 of them)
2. Stacked Bar / Column Chart Templates:
(22 of them)
3. Pie Chart Templates:
(22 of them)
Even though I seldom use pie-charts (since they hide more than they show and all that) I know a lot of people do use them and hence here they are,
How to use these templates?
Learn more about using chart templates in excel
- Method 1 - Easy and Quick:
- Download the chart templates (download links at top and bottom of this post)
- Copy both the chart you wanted and the “data used” portion
- Paste in your workbook
- Change the values, remove columns (or add them if you wish)
- Modify formatting if needed
- Be careful now, as your boss may feel zealous for your charting skills
- Method 2: Slightly geeky but works like a charm!
- Download the chart templates (download links at top and bottom of this post)
- Select the chart you want, right click and select “Chart type” from the context menu
[note: for more detailed steps & how-to, look in the excel worksheets you have downloaded - In the dailog, go to “custom types” tab and select “User-defined” radio button (towards bottom left)
- Click on “Add…” button, and give your chart-template a name that you can remember
- When you are done, click ok, and the chart is now added to your user-defined-charts library
- In future, when you want to use the chart, simply click on charts icon on tool bar, and select the chart type as custom -> user defined ->your chart name
- Now, watch out as your charts start stealing eyeballs in the boardroom!
Finally we can say good bye to default chart formats and all the associated eyesore
Download the free MS Excel chart / graph templates
(I have put them in 3 separate excel sheets):
More Charting Resources
Excel Dashboards - Tutorials & Downloads
Free Excel Downloads
Charts and Graphs
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There’s nothing worse than the default MS chart formats. Thank you for working to rid the world of these eyesores.
Man, you sure do have a fetish for Excel.
What about line charts? These are great but not feeling the love for the lines. -C
@Monte Bel - thank you for visiting PHD and commenting
Hope you liked the templates
@ Kapil : thanks
@Cristobal: Thanks for visiting PHD, btw, the line charts are there, just load the template and convert the chart type from bar chart to line chart, the colors would adjust automatically (they should
), let me know if this doesn’t work.
Really cool templates, many thanks, I downloaded them for future use. Bye
Excellent prepared
Hi, your chart templates are great. I did n’t understand how to create 1*1 pixel in paint brush with the colour of my choice.
@DRN … thanks, you can create the color of your choice in mspaint by,
1. go to start > all programs > accessories > paint and click on it
2. double click on any of the color buttons at the bottom
3. select “Define custom colors >>”
4. enter RGB values for your color choice
5. click on “Add to custom colors”
6. click OK
7. select paint bucket tool (tool tip says “fill with color”)
8. click on the image area
9. go to menu > image > image attributes (or press ctrl+E)
10. enter 1 as width and height
11. save as bmp or jpg or gif
cool, now you have a 1*1 pixel in color of your choice.
Let me know if this helps you…
welcome to PHD…
Thanks a lot…I got it
Chandoo, You are a Freaking Genius, you saved me atleast 2 days of work.
Thanks Man for this, great to see some value been added to the Internet.
Please do post some more sample, this will be really helpful to alot of us.
@Dhondu … welcome to PHD, thanks alot for your comments..
thank you!!!
you made my day..too much helpful
Dear Chandoo,
Really you are great yar! I learned most of the Conditional Formatting by your tips. If you have any other tips and tricks in excell please send me a link.
Thank You
With regards.
Is it possible to display charts simply by selecting the data, and is it possible to change the chart by selecting another data.
Please reply.
Dear Excel Master,
Hi Chandoo I have changed your name …You are really great..I have download all cool templates for future use.
If you have any other tips and tricks in excel please send me a link.
Have nice Weekend Bue.
Thank you so much sir, Really cool templates, I downloaded them for mu day to day use. KEEP IT UP!
@Sadiq Ali: Hi sorry, I didnt notice your question till now “Is it possible to display charts simply by selecting the data, and is it possible to change the chart by selecting another data.”
well, its not possible to plot charts dynamically by selecting data unless you are willing to write some VBA. There are other techniques to make charts look dynamic, I will write about one such technique sometime soon.. keep watching this blog
@Nikhil - welcome to PHD blog, thanks for your comments. Sure, just subscribe to our mailing list or blog content feed to get fresh hot excel tips everyday.
@Shanker - Welcome to PHD blog. Thanks for your comments. Keep visiting this place to enjoy more tips
Hi Chandoo!
I’ve been reading through a lot of the site for hours and I got a question man, I’ve encountered recently some excel documents a co-worker downloaded which is sort of a quiz, basically a game quiz, it has an image of a movie and you had to guess the name in a box then, a box below gave you a correct with green bgcolor or wrong in red bgcolor. My question is what kind of formula or way, can I get to use this so I can do some quiz test for some students? it’s a very ingenius way to pop the brain a bit with excel. I appreciate the time you put into this site, keep up the work.
hi chandoo,
is my second time typing it seems my explorer sucks, I’ll make it short this time, I received an email with an excel document that does a quiz where they showed you an image of a movie and you had to answer which movie is it from, almost case sensitive capitals don’t matter, so i would like to know what is the formula or whatever it is so i can apply it on educative ways for classes. thanks for the time you put into this site.
@istreva … thankfully your first comment made to my server before crashing your browser. Welcome to PHD and thanks for the comments
You can create a quiz in excel by using protected cells and conditional formatting. I will write a tutorial on this may be in the next 2 weeks. Basically the way to do this is to have the answers in a range that is protected so that no one can view it, and then use conditional formatting on cell(s) to change color to red / green based the answer entered by quiz taker.
I think that would be awsome, I’ve been trying to figure that out but I’m not an excel guru, I studied some computer programing and done some javascript, so i thought there would be some “if” “then” involved, I think If you can point me in one direction with one sample I can manage to replicate the process and maybe even add on some more to it! Thanks man, 6 hours a day in the office can be very insighfull reading your site
Hi
I just found this site and am happy to find other people interested in Excel as much as I am!. I have a problem because my IE can’t find the link to download the charts. Are they still available??
Thanks
Joseph
@Joseph: Welcome to PHD and thanks for visiting us
You can download the files from http://cid-b663e096d6c08c74.skydrive.live.com/embedrow.aspx/Public/73%20Free%20Designer%20Quality%20Excel%20Chart%20Templates.zip it is a one zip file available for download from Live.com’s skydrive. Let me know if you have access issues, I can upload the file to my own server and give you another link.
Thanks,
Hi Chandoo, this site is really useful for my report. Everyone might admire me as of my interesting presentation. nice day!
Thaopham: Awesome… I am happy you found this useful
I am still not able to download these templets…….ti shows access denied…..sorry for being too demanding but if you could mail to my id azmat1979@rediffmail.com it would be highly appreceiated
hi Chandoo… this is of great help and saves a lot of time…
Thanks
Fantastic! I don’t use Excel much, but this is so cool, I had to download the templates
Thank you.
Great work!!! This is very useful!! Cheers - Deepak
perfect! thanks very much for your contribution.
Excellent charts!
Microsoft must buy your chart templates and use them in their next Office release.
May God bless you.
Hi Chandoo,
Thank you very much…I learned a lot conditional formatting &
Dashboard technique because of you.
If you can provide more dashborad examples clearly..then it will be
a great help.
Regards
Rajinikanth
thanks for your valuable chart templates. really they are very useful. keep up good job.
Hi Chandoo,
Its very good help for every one who wants to prepare the charts,
your templates are good and I utilised some of the templates with some modifications.
Great job!!!!!!thanks
@Rajinikanth: Welcome to PHD and thanks for your nice words. I am very happy you liked the templates and using them in your work.
@Nick: Welcome to PHD and I am happy you liked these charts.
good day, dear, This is very useful, thanks a lot,
keep is going,