Add Charts to Excel Workbooks

OfficeIMO.Excel writes native Excel charts. They stay editable in Excel and keep a link to their source cells, so they update when the data changes. The chart type comes from the shared OfficeChartType enum (Column, ColumnClustered, Bar, Line, Pie, Area, Scatter, and more).

Chart a list of objects

Pass the objects, the category property, and one or more value properties. The data is written to the sheet and the chart references it.

C#

using OfficeIMO;
using OfficeIMO.Excel;

Sale[] sales = [new("Q1", 10_500, 12_000), new("Q2", 19_800, 18_000), new("Q3", 25_300, 28_000)];

using var book = ExcelDocument.Create("Sales.xlsx");
ExcelSheet sheet = book.AddSheet("Sales");
sheet.AddTable(sales, new OfficeTableOptions { Name = "Sales" });

sheet.AddChart(OfficeChartType.ColumnClustered, sales, nameof(Sale.Quarter),
    new ExcelChartOptions { Title = "Revenue vs target", Row = 2, Column = 6 },
    nameof(Sale.Revenue), nameof(Sale.Target));

book.Save();

record Sale(string Quarter, double Revenue, double Target);

PowerShell

$trend = Import-OfficeCsv -Path .\Data\Ticket-Trend.csv
New-OfficeExcel -Path .\Reports\Helpdesk-Trend.xlsx {
    ExcelSheet 'Trend' {
        ExcelChart -InputObject $trend -Category Week -Value Opened, Closed -Type Line -Address A1 -Title 'Tickets per week'
    }
}

Chart explicit series and style it

Use ExcelChartData when the values do not come from a list of objects. The returned ExcelChart has fluent methods for the legend, axis titles, number formats, and data labels. Combination charts (series on primary and secondary axes), trendlines, data-label templates, and scatter charts are shown in OfficeIMO.Examples/Excel/ChartsExcel.cs in the repository.

C#

using OfficeIMO;
using OfficeIMO.Drawing;
using OfficeIMO.Excel;

using var book = ExcelDocument.Create("Quarterly.xlsx");
ExcelSheet sheet = book.AddSheet("Summary");

var data = new ExcelChartData(
    new[] { "Q1", "Q2", "Q3", "Q4" },
    new[] {
        new ExcelChartSeries("Sales", new[] { 10d, 20d, 25d, 30d }),
        new ExcelChartSeries("Target", new[] { 12d, 22d, 24d, 32d })
    });

ExcelChart chart = sheet.AddChart(OfficeChartType.ColumnClustered, data, new ExcelChartOptions {
    Row = 2, Column = 2,
    Width = OfficeLength.Pixels(640), Height = OfficeLength.Pixels(360),
    Title = "Quarterly sales"
});
chart.SetLegend(OfficeChartLegendPosition.Bottom)
     .SetCategoryAxisTitle("Quarter")
     .SetValueAxisTitle("Revenue (k)")
     .SetValueAxisNumberFormat("#,##0", sourceLinked: false);

book.Save();

Chart an existing table

When the data is already an Excel table, reference it by name.

PowerShell

New-OfficeExcel -Path .\Reports\Regions.xlsx {
    ExcelSheet 'Summary' {
        ExcelTable (Import-OfficeCsv -Path .\Data\Region-Revenue.csv) -Name RegionSummary
        ExcelChart -Table RegionSummary -Category Region -Value Revenue -Address F2 -Type Column
    }
}

Limits and reference

Limits: chart rendering in Excel PDF and image export is covered by the Excel PDF row; native chart fidelity is in the Excel format card.

Reference: OfficeIMO.Excel API · PSWriteOffice cmdlets