Skip to main content

Kutools for Office — One Suite. Five Tools. Get More Done.

How to add up/down bars to line chart in Excel?

Author Sun Last modified

A chart with up or down bars can obviously help you view the comparison of a company’s investment and earning in the same period. Now I will teach you to insert add up and down bars into a chart in Excel.

Add up/down bars to chart in Excel

Add up/down bars to chart in Excel

Only in 2-D line chart can add up and down bars.

1. Click the line chart to show the Chart Tools group in the Ribbon. See screenshot:

a screenshot showing the Chart Tools tab

2. Click Layout tab, and click Up/Down Bars > Up/Down Bars. See screenshot:

a screenshot showing Up/Down Bars

Note: In Excel 2013, you need to click the Add Chart Element > Up/Down Bars > Up/Down Bars under the Design tab. Now the up and down bars are inserted in the line chart.

a screenshot of adding Up/Down Bars

You can format the bars as you need by doing as follow step:

Right click the down or up bars and select Format Down Bars/ Format Up Bars;

In the popped out dialog, check Solid fill Option in Fill section and select a color you like in the list, and check No line in the Border Color section. See screenshots:

a screenshot showing how to open the Format Down Bars dialog
a screenshot of arrow
a screenshot of changing the fill color
a screenshot of arrow 2
a screenshot of changing the border color to No line

Note: You will see the Fill options and Border options in the added Format Down Bars pane in Excel 2013.

Now you can see the finished line chart as show as below:

a screenshot of result

Relative Articles:

Best Office Productivity Tools

🤖 Kutools AI Aide: Revolutionize data analysis based on: Intelligent Execution   |  Generate Code  |  Create Custom Formulas  |  Analyze Data and Generate Charts  |  Invoke Kutools Functions…
Popular Features: Find, Highlight or Identify Duplicates   |  Delete Blank Rows   |  Combine Columns or Cells without Losing Data   |   Round without Formula ...
Super Lookup: Multiple Criteria VLookup  |   Multiple Value VLookup  |   VLookup Across Multiple Sheets   |   Fuzzy Lookup ....
Advanced Drop-down List: Quickly Create Drop Down List   |  Dependent Drop Down List   |  Multi-select Drop Down List ....
Column Manager: Add a Specific Number of Columns  |  Move Columns  |  Toggle Visibility Status of Hidden Columns  |  Compare Ranges & Columns ...
Featured Features: Grid Focus   |  Design View   |   Big Formula Bar   |  Workbook & Sheet Manager   |  Resource Library (Auto Text)   |  Date Picker   |  Combine Worksheets   |  Encrypt/Decrypt Cells   |  Send Emails by List   |  Super Filter   |   Special Filter (filter bold/italic/strikethrough...) ...
Top 15 Toolsets:  12 Text Tools (Add Text, Remove Characters, ...)   |   50+ Chart Types (Gantt Chart, ...)   |   40+ Practical Formulas (Calculate age based on birthday, ...)   |   19 Insertion Tools (Insert QR Code, Insert Picture from Path, ...)   |   12 Conversion Tools (Numbers to Words, Currency Conversion, ...)   |   7 Merge & Split Tools (Advanced Combine Rows, Split Cells, ...)   |   ... and more
Use Kutools in your preferred language – supports English, Spanish, German, French, Chinese, and 40+ others!

Supercharge Your Excel Skills with Kutools for Excel, and Experience Efficiency Like Never Before. Kutools for Excel Offers Over 300 Advanced Features to Boost Productivity and Save Time.  Click Here to Get The Feature You Need The Most...

Office Tab Brings Tabbed interface to Office, and Make Your Work Much Easier

  • Enable tabbed editing and reading in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, Access, Visio and Project.
  • Open and create multiple documents in new tabs of the same window, rather than in new windows.
  • Increases your productivity by 50%, and reduces hundreds of mouse clicks for you every day!

All Kutools add-ins. One installer

Kutools for Office suite bundles add-ins for Excel, Word, Outlook & PowerPoint plus Office Tab Pro, which is ideal for teams working across Office apps.

Excel Word Outlook Tabs PowerPoint
  • All-in-one suite — Excel, Word, Outlook & PowerPoint add-ins + Office Tab Pro
  • One installer, one license — set up in minutes (MSI-ready)
  • Works better together — streamlined productivity across Office apps
  • 30-day full-featured trial — no registration, no credit card
  • Best value — save vs buying individual add-in