Module 3 ended with Rahul owning a pivot chart wired to his sales pivot. Then he right-clicked it, chose Change Chart Type, and Excel offered him roughly sixty options: cones, radars, sunbursts, something called a waterfall. He froze.
Here is the calming truth: three chart types do about 95% of office work. The other fifty-seven exist, and you can ignore them for years without anyone noticing.
A chart is a sentence
Before touching the chart menu, say your point out loud as one plain sentence. Not "here is the data" — an actual claim:
- "Mumbai sells the most."
- "Sales have grown every month since January."
- "Bags bring in more than everything else combined."
The sentence picks the chart for you. Comparing things? Bar. Change over time? Line. A share of a whole? Usually still a bar, as you are about to see.
Bar and column charts — for comparing things