Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated May 31, 2025)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021
Excel is great at creating all sorts of charts from your data. You can even customize the charts to your heart's content. One of the customizations you can make is to replace the regular bars (in a bar chart) with your own graphics. For instance, you might have a small graphic of a house that you want to use for the bars. This could be great if you wanted to use "stacked" houses to represent, for instance, housing starts in an area.
To use your own graphics in place of Excel's built-in bars, follow these steps if you're using Excel 2007 or Excel 2010:
Figure 1. The Fill options of the Format Data Series dialog box.
If you are using Excel 2013 or a later version, the steps are a bit different because Microsoft did away with the Format Data Series dialog box and replaced it with a task pane. Here are the steps:
Figure 2. The Fill options of the Format Data Series dialog box.
ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (6156) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Using Graphics to Represent Data Series.
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