How to Draw a Trendline in Excel
Microsoft Excel contains tools for not only visualizing complex data, but analyzing data and discovering trends. The built-in trendline feature allows you to draw a variety of trendlines, which is helpful for determine relationships in data of almost any kind. Financial analysis, basic data mining, economic forecasting and scientific research are just a few fields where trendlines are helpful. Learn how to create a trendline from a data plot in Excel to visually demonstrate data relationships.
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Instructions
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Click a scatter plot in Excel. If you do not have a plot, highlight any set of data, click the "Insert" tab and select "Scatter" from the menu.
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Navigate to the Layout tab under Chart Tools near the right end of the Excel ribbon menu. Click the "Trendline" button.
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Select a trendline from the choices that most closely matches your data. Choose "Linear Trendline" if you suspect there is a linear relationship, "Exponential Trendline" for exponential relationships, "Linear Forecast Trendline" to predict the next two periods of data or "Two Period Moving Average" to predict data based on a two-period moving average. The "Linear Trendline" is the classic trendline option for most situations.
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Press "Ctrl" and "Z" at the same time on your keyboard or click the back arrow in the upper-left corner of the Excel window to remove a trendline. You can also return to the Trendline button and click "None."
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Click the Trendline button to add another trendline. Readability is the only limit to how many trendlines you can add.
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Tips & Warnings
Click "Trendline Options" from the drop-down trendline menu to change the trendline color, style or add a shadow.
