Creating Waterfall Charts in Excel 2016

Excel 2016 has given us a plethora of useful – and long overdue – chart types for us to work with.

One of these, is the Waterfall Chart

I‘ve written before about how to create a Waterfall Chart in Excel – it has long been one of the more challenging chart types to re-create, so was keen to see how the experience compares.

It’s well worth having a quick scan through the original article on how to create these.

In the original post, I had some mock sales and cost data, and wanted to waterfall it

It was a lengthy and tedious process to get the end result.

Introducing the 2016 Waterfall Chart

To test out the new chart type, I copied the exact same data across that I started with previously (as per above).

Select your data, and INSERTàCharts GroupàWaterfall

And immediately, Excel has created a chart splitting out your rises and falls

You’ll see that the last field, Net Profit is flagged as an Increase rather than the total end figure. Excel holds a separate flag for you to mark which value(s) should be treated as a total figure.

Simply select that one value (selecting it once will select all matching values, selecting it again will select just that one value

With just this one value selected, right click on it, and select ‘Format Data Point’

On the Format Pane, you should see a tick-box for ‘Set as Total’ – tick it.

And there you have it – I was very impressed with the ease and speed of creating this. Of course, you can continue to format it some more if you wish

Here are my ‘old’ and ‘new’ charts together

(There does not appear to be an option for Callout labels for Waterfal Charts)

Anyone who frequently creates Waterfall Charts, or those who want to but are daunted by the process, will love this feature.

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