How to add Trendline in Excel Charts

With Excel Charts, it is very easy to create Trendlines for your data.  Trendlines show which direction the trend of your data is going, and gives you the trajectory as well.

In this tutorial, you will cover all of these sub-topics in details:

• How to add trendline in Excel
• Different types of trendline
• Format the Trendline
• Use trendline to forecast future data
• Add multiple trendline to same chart
• How to remove trendline in Excel

How to add Trendline in Excel

*** Watch our video and step by step guide below on Trend Chart in Excel with a free downloadable workbook to practice ***

STEP 2: Select the Format Trendline option.

Or, you can skip STEP 1 & 2 and simply double click on the trendline to open the Format Trendline pane.

STEP 3: From the Format Trendline pane, click the Fill & Line category.

STEP 4: Select color – BLUE

STEP 5: Change the width to 2.5

STEP 6: Change the dash type

Your formatted trendline is ready!

Use Trendline to Forecast Future Data

In Excel, you can extend your data and project the data trend into the future or past using the features of Trendline.

In this example, you want to forecast sales for the next 6 periods. Follow the steps below to understand how to forecast data trends.

STEP 1:Double click on the trendline to open the Format Trendline pane.

STEP 2: Select the Trendline Options tab.

STEP 3: Under forecast, type “6” in the forward box.

Your project data trend for the next 6 periods is created.

You can use trendline to extrapolate the trend of the data into the past. Simply type the period in the backward box instead of the forward box.

Add multiple trendline to same chart

Until now, you have learned how to add trendline in Excel. But you can add multiple trendlines to the same chart. Let’s see how it can be done.

Say, you want to add both linear and moving average trendline to the existing data. Add the first linear trendline as discussed above and then follow the steps below to add another trendline.

STEP 1: Click on the Chart Elements (“+” icon) on the top-right corner of the chart.

STEP 2: Click on the arrow next to Trendline

STEP 3: Select Two Period Moving Average from the list

STEP 4: Select the series SALES.

Excel will show both the trendlines on the same chart.

STEP 3: From the dropdown, uncheck Trendline.

Or, you could simply right click on the trendline and click on delete.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, you have covered how to add trendline in Excel, the different types of trendlines, formatting the trendline, extending the trendline into future or past periods, adding multiple trendlines to the same chart, and finally how to remove them.

You can learn more about Excel Charts by going through these blogs!

Further Learning:

• 61 Excel Charts Examples!
• Project Milestone Chart Using Excel
• Pivot Chart Settings

Make sure to download our FREE PDF on the 333 Excel keyboard Shortcuts here:

You can learn more about how to use Excel by viewing our FREE Excel webinar training on Formulas, Pivot Tables, and Macros & VBA!