Charts and sparklines are powerful data visualization tools in Excel. Here's a guide to the most popular chart types in Excel and how to best use them.

Microsoft Excel offers a plethora of tools for representing your data visually. The most basic of these -- and arguably the most useful -- is the humble chart. But it's not always easy to know where to begin with charts. We're here to help.

In this tutorial, we'll get you started using charts and sparklines in Excel, from understanding the basic chart types to creating and editing charts based on your spreadsheet data.

A chart is a visual representation of the data in an Excel worksheet. Charts allow you to easily see trends, make comparisons, and gain insights that are hard to see from just the raw numbers.