How To Make a Graph on Google Slides

Cover for how to make a graph in Google Slides

Data-driven presentations require creating slides with graphs that can reflect information in an easy-to-grasp format. Google Slides, like other presentation apps, provides the utility to insert graphs, with all necessary formatting options to help present important information visually.

How to Make a Chart in Google Slides

To create Google Slides charts, go to Insert > Charts. From here, you can choose to insert a bar, column, line, or pie chart in Google Slides. Furthermore, you can also pick a Google Sheet to create your chart.

Inserting a chart in Google Slides - How to insert and edit pie chart in Google Slides
How to insert and edit pie chart in Google Slides

Your selected chart will be populated on the slide. To edit the existing chart, click the menu from the top right corner and click Open Source to see the data source.

Open Source option in charts in Google Slides - how to make a graph in google slides
How to make a graph in Google Slides

This will open the Google Sheet containing your chart data. You can edit the data and labels from this sheet. The changes you make will be immediately reflected on the chart in the Google Sheet.

Edit chart data in Google Slides

To make changes to the chart on your slide, click Update on the chart to refresh the data trends.

Updating a chart in Google Slides
How to make a data-driven graph in Google Slides

How to Format a Chart in Google Slides

It is quite likely that you would want to further edit your chart by adjusting its colors or overall format in Google Slides. To do this, select the chart and click Format Options from the top toolbar.

Accessing Format Options for charts in Google Slides - How to format a chart on Google Slides
How to format a chart on Google Slides

From the right pane, you will be able to make changes to the chart. Click on any of the menus to expand it, and select the required formatting options to edit your chart in Google Slides.

Format options available for charts in Google Slides - Advanced formatting of charts and graphs on Google Slides
Advanced formatting of charts and graphs on Google Slides

Size and Rotation: This menu enables editing the size and rotating the chart by selecting the width, height, width scale, and height scale. You can also adjust the chart size and rotate the chart via drag and drop.

Position: You can position your chart to the top left or center by selecting the position from the given drop-down menu.

Recolor: As the name suggests, this menu enables recoloring the chart by selecting a color scheme from the given menu.

Recolor for charts in Google Slides

Adjustments: You can adjust the transparency, contrast, and brightness of the chart from this menu.

Drop Shadow: This menu can be used to add a drop shadow to the chart. You can also adjust the transparency, angle, blur radius, and distance of the shadow.

Reflection: this menu can be checked to give a reflection to the chart to stylize it. The adjustment options for this menu include transparency, distance, and size.

Accessing drop shadows, reflection and other advanced adjustments in Google Slides

Charts in Google Slides come with all basic formatting and editing options that can easily help you design basic charts. However, the charts aren’t as comprehensive as PowerPoint, which means you might need to opt for third-party Google Slides Templates to find chart slides that are professionally designed.

Data Visualization, Google Slides
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