How to Use Sparklines in Excel to Show Trends (Fast & Easy)

Sparklines are small charts in Excel that fit in a cell.

If you love reports, you may have seen some of them already.

Here’s an example of sparklines that show income per quarter on US states.

Although sparklines don’t have the same functionalities as regular charts, they are great in adding a level of visual analysis into your report by showing trends.

In addition, sparklines make your report look better and more reader-friendly. 😉

Before you start:

Throughout this guide, you need a data set to practice.

I’ve included one for you (for free).

Download it right below!

In Excel, there are three types of sparklines you can add — line, column, and win/loss.

Line and column sparklines are easy to understand since they are just tiny line and column charts.

On the other hand, a win/loss sparkline resembles a column chart and a box and whisker plot. This type of sparkline is good where the data is binary — win/loss, yes/no, true/false, 1/-1, etc…

The good news is, adding and formatting each one follows a similar process.

For this tutorial, let’s use the following dataset:

To insert a sparkline in Excel, select the cell in which you want the sparkline to reside in.

Then, on the ‘Insert’ tab…

Click the type of sparkline (on the ‘Sparklines section) you want to add.

Let’s try adding a line sparkline in our example.

After that, you will be asked for the data range.

To choose the range, either type into the field the range or click the up arrow button and select the cells that contain the data.

After selecting the data range, press ‘Enter’ on your keyboard or click the arrow down button on the window and click ‘OK’.

Nice and easy! 😊

You can also format a sparkline’s style, color, and even the points to show.

All of these are in the ‘Design’ tab.

Markers correspond to the different points that can be shown on a sparkline such as:

• High Point
• Low Point
• Negative Points
• First Point
• Last Point
• Markers

To show any of them, just check their appropriate boxes on the ‘Show’ section.

You can change their color from the ‘Marker Color’.

If you have noticed, you can’t delete a sparkline by pressing the ‘Delete’ or the ‘Backspace’ key on your keyboard.

To delete a sparkline, all you have to do is select the cell where that sparkline resides.

Then, click the ‘Clear’ button found on either the ‘Home’ tab or on the ‘Design’ tab.

That’s it! The sparkline has been deleted. 😊

Sparklines are like mini charts found on an Excel cell. Technically, they are serving as the background of those cells (which is the reason why you can’t delete them).