top of page

How to Build a Quadrant Chart in Excel


Do you want a chart that will quickly display 3 measures quickly? A Quadrant chart looks like a scatter plot but it is divided into four sections.


Here is an example chart. I have fake office supplies by weight and cost. You can see different items in different areas, such as Ink is high weight and high cost.

Pencils and Post its are low weight and low cost.

In order to create this in Excel I had the following data;



I had to set up another area in excel with the following data;


I entered the high and low values for the X Axis, 0 and then 25. I based this on the data and made a decision that 25 should be the end point since 23 is the last cost value. I entered 13 which is the median of 0 and 25.


For the Y axis I did the reverse of the above set up.


In order to create the chart I selected the cell ranges A1 - C6. I went to the recommended charts on the Insert tab. (This location may change according to what version of Excel you have.) I selected the Scatter Chart.



This chart gave me both plots, which I don't want.


With the cursor in this chart, the Chart Tools menu will appear. I went to the Design tab and selected Change Chart Type.



On the Change Chart Type pop-up menu, I selected the second chart in the pane. I then clicked OK.

I manually selected the grid lines in this chart and deleted them. Its visual noise and does not add much value.

I right-clicked in this new chart and clicked on Select Data...

In the Select Data Source pop-up menu I clicked Add since I want to add the X and Y axis grid lines to this chart.


On the Edit Series pop-up menu I selected the below values for the Y Axis and clicked OK. Then I clicked the Add button again to add the X Axis cells. I then clicked OK.



This adds orange circles and gray circles to the chart. We have to do some manipulating to the axis and chart to connect these dots together.


If you right-click on the x axis, you will be able to change the max value down to 25. You can do the same for the y axis.

I after I competed this step, I clicked on the gray dots to highlight them both. (There is a way to just click on one, and it will highlight both.) I clicked on the Paint Bucket and selected Solid line under the Line menu.

I then checked the Marker menu and selected No Fill for both the Fill and Border menus to get rid of the gray dots.



I repeated these steps for the orange dots.

I then right-clicked on the blue dots and selected Add Data labels. This just added the number values for weight. I wanted to add the text. So I right-clicked on the blue dots and selected Format Data Labels.


I selected a range for the labels from the excel spreadsheet and selected cells A1-A6. I then unchecked the Y value.


This step brought me to my final chart. I added a Title, removed the Legend and then added the arrow shapes. I also filled the arrow shapes with the gradient fill option.


6,160 views0 comments

Comments


bottom of page