Google Sheets allows you to create a variety of different charts. Here are visual examples of each type of chart with guidance on when you might use each one.
A line chart is great for time series data. For example, if you want to see how your company is performing each month, you could plot the revenues over time to show the fluctuations in the company's results.
Line charts are perfect to show fluctuations over a period of time.
Area charts give you a sense of scale by coloring in the area below the lines. I like to use these to "build up" a cost or amount by stacking the bars on top of each other.
Area charts focus on shading area below lines to create visual indicators.
Sheets features a variety of ways to present area charts. In the example above, I've got my employee costs illustrated in a chart. The combination of salaries and benefits are the total employee cost.
Column and bar charts are similar, as they use vertical lines to show values. Column charts use vertical lines, while bar charts are horizontal lines. In either case, they can help you understand the magnitude of the items they represent.
Bar charts are visual indicators that show you the magnitude of values using lines.
A pie chart is a classic presentation tool, showing how the parts of data relate to the whole. You can use a pie chart to draw attention to how much time is being spent on certain types of work, for example.
A Google Sheets pie chart will automatically help you calculate the percentages. Put your data in two columns and create a pie chart to automatically divide up your values into categories.
A pie chart divides items up into a "pie" which each slice of the pie representing its proportion; a larger slice indicates a larger share in the data.
by Andrew Childress 4 Apr 2017