Bar chart with lower & upper bounds [tutorial]

Bar & Column charts are very useful for comparison. Here is a little trick that can enhance them even more.

Lets say you are looking at sales of various products in a column chart. And you want to know how sales of a given product compare with a lower bound (last year sales) and an upper bound (competition benchmark). By adding these boundary markers, your chart instantly becomes even more meaningful.

How to create a chart with lower & upper bounds?

1. Select data and make a column chart

Lets say your data looks like this. Select it all and insert a column chart from insert ribbon.

2. Convert lower & upper columns to lines

In Excel 2013:

1. Right click on either lower or upper bound columns.
2. Choose “Change series chart type…”
3. Select “line chart with markers” as the chart type for both lower & upper series
4. Done!

In earlier versions:

1. Right click on lower series
2. Choose “Change series chart type…”
3. Select “line chart with markers”
4. Repeat the process for upper series
5. Done
6. Related: How to create combination charts in Excel?

After this step, your chart looks like this:

3. Set line color to “no line” and format markers

This is easy. Just set the line color to “no line” and format the markers so that they are prominent.

Your column chart with lower & upper bounds is ready.

Bonus step: Custom shapes for lower & upper bounds

If you want something fancy, you can use custom shapes for lower & upper bounds, as shown below.

To get this:

1. Draw custom shapes using drawing tools in Insert ribbon.
2. Make sure they are really small (else the markers will be shown at wrong places)
3. Copy the shape (CTRL+C)
4. Select marker series for which you want this shape.
5. Paste (CTRL+V)
6. Done!!!

Video tutorial of Column chart with lower & upper bounds

Here is a video tutorial of column chart with lower & upper bounds.

This video is also part of my Excel School program. If you like the video, you are going to love our Excel School program, where more than 50 such videos will help you become awesome in Excel.

Click here to know more about Excel School & join us.

Download the chart workbook

Click here to download the workbook. It contains column chart with lower & upper bounds example, detailed instructions and custom shape example.

When do you use lower, upper bounds in your charts?

I use this technique all the time. I apply markers for extra data like average, KPI targets, last year values etc. Here is one more example.

What about you? Do you use lower, upper bounds in your charts? In which scenarios you apply them? Please share your experiences using comments.

For more charting tips…

Make sure you check out our charting page. It has 100s of Excel tutorials, templates & design examples on charts.

If you still want more, consider joining Excel School. You will be a charting pro soon.