Adding error bars on excel

When you represent data in a chart, there can be cases when there is a level of variability with a data point.

For example, you can not (with 100% certainty) predict the temperature of the next 10 days or the stock price of a company in the coming week.

There will always be a level of variability in the data. The final value could be a little higher or lower.

If you have to represent this kind of data, you can use Error Bars in the Charts in Excel.

What are Error Bars?

Error bars are the bars in an Excel chart that would represent the variability of a data point.

This will give you an idea of how accurate is the data point (measurement). It tells you how far the actual can go from the reported value (higher or lower).

For example, in the below chart, I have the sales estimates for the four quarters, and there is an error bar for each of the quarter bar. Each error bar indicates how much less or more the sales can be for each quarter.

The more the variability, the less accurate is the data point in the chart.

I hope this gives you an overview of what is an error bar and how to use an error bar in Excel charts. Now let me show you how to add these error bars in Excel charts.

How to Add Error Bars in Excel Charts

In Excel, you can add error bars in a 2-D line, bar, column or area chart. You can also add it to the XY scatter chart or a bubble chart.

Suppose you have a dataset and the chart (created using this dataset) as shown below and you want to add error bars to this dataset:

Below are the steps to add data bars in Excel (2019/2016/2013):

1. Click anywhere in your chart. It will make available the three icons as shown below.
2. Click on the plus icon (the Chart Element icon)
3. Click on the black triangle icon at the right of ‘Error bars’ option (it appears when you hover the cursor on the ‘Error Bars’ option)
4. Choose from the three options (Standard Error, Percentage, or Standard Deviation), or click on ‘More Options’ to get even more options. In this example, I am clicking on Percentage option

The above steps would add the Percentage error bar to all the four columns in the chart.

By default, the value of the percentage error bar is 5%. This means that it will create an error bar that goes a maximum of 5% above and below the current value.

Types of Error Bars in Excel Charts

As you saw in the steps above that there are different types of error bars in Excel.

So let’s go through these one-by-one (and more on these later as well).

‘Standard Error’ Error Bar

This shows the ‘standard error of the mean’ for all values. This error bar tells us how far the mean of the data is likely to be from the true population mean.

This is something you may need if you work with statistical data.

‘Percentage’ Error Bar

This one is simple. It will show the specified percentage variation in each data point.

For example, in our chart above, we added the percentage error bars where the percentage value was 5%. This would mean that if your data point value is 100, the error bar will be from 95 to 105.

‘Standard Deviation’ Error Bar

This shows how close the bar is to the mean of the dataset.

The error bars, in this case, are all in the same position (as shown below). And for each column, you can see how much is the variation from the overall mean of the dataset.

By default, Excel plots these error bars with a value of standard deviation as 1, but you can change this if you want (by going to the More Options and then changing the value in the pane that opens).

‘Fixed Value’ Error Bar

This, as the name suggests, shows the error bars where the error margin is fixed.

For example, in the quarterly sales example, you can specify the error bars to be 100 units. It will then create an error bar where the value can deviate from -100 to +100 units (as shown below).

‘Custom’ Error Bar

In case you want to create your own custom error bars, where you specify the upper and lower limit for each data point, you can do that using the custom error bars option.

You can choose to keep the range the same for all error bars, or can also make individual custom error bars for each data point (example covered later in this tutorial).

This could be useful when you have a different level of variability of each data point. For example, I may be quite confident about sales numbers in Q1 (i.e, low variability) and less confident about sales numbers in Q3 and Q4 (i.e., high variability). In such cases, I can use custom error bars to show the custom variability in each data point.

Now, let’s dive into more into how to add custom error bars in Excel charts.

Adding Custom Error Bars in Excel Charts

Error bars other than the custom error bars (i.e., fixed, percentage, standard deviation, and standard error) are all quite straightforward to apply. You need to just select the option and specify a value (if needed).

Custom error bars need a little more work.

With custom error bars, there could be two scenarios:

1. All data point have the same variability
2. Every data point has its own variability

Let’s see how to do each of these in Excel

Custom Error Bars – Same Variability for all Data Points

Suppose you have the data set as shown below and a chart associated with this data.

Below are the steps to create custom error bars (where the error value is the same for all data points):

1. Click anywhere in your chart. It will make available the three chart option icons.
2. Click on the plus icon (the Chart Element icon)
3. Click on the black triangle icon at the right of ‘Error bars’ option
4. Choose on ‘More Options’
5. In the ‘Format Error Bars’ pane, check the Custom option
6. Click on the ‘Specify Value’ button.
7. In the Custom Error dialog box that opens, enter the positive and negative error value. You can delete the existing value in the field and enter the value manually (without any equal to sign or brackets). In this example, I am using 50 as the error bar value.
8. Click OK

This would apply the same custom error bars for each column in the column chart.

Custom Error Bars – Different Variability for all Data Points

In case you want to have different error values for each data point, you need to have these values in a range in Excel and then you can refer to that range.

For example, suppose I have manually calculated the positive and negative error values for each data point (as shown below) and I want these to be the plotted as error bars.

Below are the steps to do this:

1. Create a column chart using the sales data
2. Click anywhere in your chart. It will make available the three icons as shown below.
3. Click on the plus icon (the Chart Element icon)
4. Click on the black triangle icon at the right of ‘Error bars’ option
5. Choose on ‘More Options’
6. In the ‘Format Error Bars’ pane, check the Custom option
7. Click on the ‘Specify Value’ button.
8. In the Custom Error dialog box that opens, click on the range selector icon for the Positive Error Value and then select the range that has these values (C2:C5 in this example)
9. Now, click on the range selector icon for the Negative Error Value and then select the range that has these values (D2:D5 in this example)
10. Click OK

The above steps would give you custom error bars for each data point based on the selected values.

Note that each column in the above chart has a different size error bar as these have been specified using the values in the ‘Positive EB’ and ‘Negative EB’ columns in the dataset.

In case you change any of the values later, the chart would automatically update.

Formatting the Error Bars

There are a few things you can do to format and modify the error bars. These include the color, thickness of the bar, and the shape of it.

To format an error bar, right-click on any of the bars and then click on ‘Format Error bars’. This will open the ‘Format Error Bars’ pane on the right.

Below are the things you can format/modify in an error bar:

Color/width of the Error bar

This can be done by selecting the ‘Fill and Line’ option in then changing the color and/or width.

You can also change the dash type in case you want to make your error bar look different than a solid line.

One example where this could be useful is when you want to highlight the error bars and not the data points. In that case, you can make everything else light in color to make the error bars pop-out

Direction/Style of the Error bar

You can choose to show error bars that go both sides of the data point (positive and negative), you can choose to only show the plus or minus error bars.

These options can be changed from the Direction option in the ‘Format Error Bars’ pane.

Another thing you can change is whether you want the end of the bar to have a cap or not. Below is an example where the chart on the left has the cap and one on the right doesn’t

Adding Horizontal Error Bars in Excel Charts

So far, we have seen the vertical error bars. which are the most common in Excel charting (and can be used with column charts, line charts, area charts, scatter charts)

But you can also add and use horizontal error bars. These can be used with bar charts as well as the scatter charts.

Below is an example, where I have plotted the quarterly data into a bar chart.

The method of adding the horizontal error bars is the same as that of vertical error bars that we saw in the sections above.

You can also add horizontal (as well as vertical error bars) to scatter charts or bubble charts. Below is an example where I have plotted the sales and profit values in a scatter chart and have added both vertical and horizontal error bars.

You can also format these error bars (horizontal or vertical) separately. For example, you may want to show a percentage error bar for horizontal error bars and custom error bars for vertical ones.

Adding Error Bars to a Series in a Combo Chart

If you work with combo charts, you can add error bars to any one of the series.

For example, below is an example of a combo chart where I have plotted the sales values as columns and profit as a line chart. And an error bar has only been added to the line chart.

Below are the steps to add error bars to a specific series only:

1. Select the series for which you want to add the error bars
2. Click on the plus icon (the Chart Element icon)
3. Click on the black triangle icon at the right of ‘Error bars’ option
4. Choose the error bar that you want to add.

If you want, you can also add error bars to all the series in the chart. Again, follow the same steps where you need to select the series for which you want to add the error bar in the first step.

Note: There is no way to add an error bar only to one specific data point. When you add it to a series, it’s added to all the data points in the chart for that series.

Deleting the Error bars

Deleting the error bars is quite straightforward.

Just select the error bar that you want to delete, and hit the delete key.

When you do this, it will delete all the error bars for that series.

If you have both horizontal and vertical error bars, you can choose to delete only one of these (again by simply selecting and hitting the Delete key).

So this is all that you need to know about adding error bars in Excel.

Hope you found this tutorial useful!

You may also like the following Excel tutorials:

• How to Create a Timeline / Milestone Chart in Excel
• How to Create a Dynamic Chart Range in Excel
• Creating a Pareto Chart in Excel
• Creating an Actual vs Target Chart in Excel
• How to Make a Histogram in Excel
• How to Find Slope in Excel?

Note: This guide on how to add error bars in Excel is suitable for Excel 2010, 2013. 2016, 2019, and Office 365 versions. 

Error bars in Excel help visualise the error margins or standard deviation in your data. Add them to your charts to show the error in absolute or percentage terms or standard deviations. 

They can be added to all the data points in a series to display a preset error percentage of the user’s choice. Error bars are very suitable for bar, column, line, scatter, and bubble charts. 

In this guide, I am going to explain how to add error bars in Excel along with their various use cases with the help of illustrations. 

Related:

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How to Superscript in Excel? (9 Best Methods)

How To Find Duplicates in Excel? (3 Easy Methods)

Watch this video to learn how to add error bars in Excel

Error Bars in Excel – An Overview

Error bars are a very useful tool to represent the errors or the variability in a data set. That is they display how far the real value can deviate from the measured value. It is a very important tool in statistical analysis and scientific experiments. 

In Excel, error bars can be added to suitable charts like bar, column, line, scatter, and bubble graphs. The user has the option to add the following forms of the error bar:

1. As a standard error
2. As a percentage error
3. As a fixed value
4. As a standard deviation 

Users can also set their own predefined error amount and set individual values for each error bar in the series. 

Adding error bars in Excel 2013 and later versions is slightly different from the method applicable to the earlier versions. These are explained in separate sections below. 

Also Read:

How to Use Goal Seek in Excel? (3 Simple Examples)

How to Insert Multiple Rows in Excel? The 4 Best Methods

How to Autofit Excel Cells? 3 Best Methods

How to Add Error Bars in Excel 2013 and Later Versions?

To add error bars in Excel 2013, Excel 2016, Excel 2019, and Microsoft Office 365 versions follow these steps after plotting suitable graphs: 

Step 1: Click anywhere in the graph

Step 2: Click on the Chart Elements option in the top-right corner of the chart. 

Step 3: Click on the Error Bars arrow to expand it and select a suitable option. 

• Standard Error – To display the standard error for all values, that is the how far the sample mean is from the population mean of the data series.
• Percentage Error – To add percentage error bars to your chart. The default percentage error is 5%, which can be changed from “More options”.
• Standard Deviation – To show the standard deviation of the data point i.e. how far is it from the average.
• More Options – To edit error bar values and to create custom error bars. It will open the Format Error Bars pane where you can do the following: 

1. Set custom values for the fixed value, percentage, and standard deviation error bars.
2. Choose the direction of the error bars (positive, negative, or both)
3. Make custom error bars based on custom values.
4. Format the appearance of error bars. 

To insert standard error bars in the chart, you can directly select the Error Bars option. 

To customize the error bars after adding them, double click on any one of them to access the Format Error Bars pane, where you can edit everything about them. 

How to Add Error Bars in Excel 2010 and Earlier Versions?

To add error bars in earlier versions of Excel i.e. versions 2010 and 2007, follow these steps:

Step 1: Click on the chart to access the Chart Tools tab in the Excel ribbon. 

Step 2: Under the Chart Tools tab, locate and click on the Error Bars option. It can be found in 

             the Analysis group in the Layout tab. 

How to Add Custom Value Error Bars in Excel?

If you want to add your own custom value error bars to your charts follow these steps:

Step 1: Click Chart Elements > Error Bars > More Options to access the Format Error Bars 

   pane

Step 2: Click on the Error Bars options tab. 

Step 3: Under Error Amount, click Custom and click on Specify Value

Step 4: In the Custom Error Bars Dialogue box enter the Positive Error Value and Negative 

  Error Value. If you don’t want a positive or negative value you must enter zero. 

That’s it, you have added custom value error bars to your graph. 

How to Add Individual Error Bars in Excel?

Sometimes, you will need to add different individual error bars of varying lengths to each data point in the series. To do this, follow these steps: 

Step 1:  Calculate the Standard deviation of each data point using the STDEV.P function in an 

    adjacent row or column. 

Step 2: Click Chart Elements > Error Bars > More Options to access the Format Error Bars 

   pane

Step 3: Click on the Error Bars options tab. 

Step 4: Under Error Amount, click Custom and Click on Specify Value

Step 5: In the Custom Error Bars Dialogue box for the Positive Error Value and Negative 

  Error Value, enter the cell reference for the Standard deviation values we just 

  calculated. 

Congratulations, you have successfully added individual error bars of varying lengths of standard deviation to each data point in the data series. 

How to Add Horizontal Error Bars In Excel?

Horizontal error bars are by default added to horizontal bar charts, bubble, and scatter graphs. They are added along with the vertical error bars. 

But, if you need only the horizontal error bars, delete the vertical error bars by right-clicking on any one of them choosing the delete button. 

How to Add Error Bars In Excel for Specific Data Series?

In case if you are using a combo chart in your Excel sheet, it is advisable to add error bars only to one particular data series in the chart. This will avoid confusion by reducing the clutter. 

To do this, just click on the specific data series you want to add error bars to, and then click on the Chart Elements button. Now, click the arrow next to Error Bars and pick any desired type. 

Doing this will add error bars only to the data series you selected. 

How to Format Error Bars in Excel? 

To edit the appearance of the error bars in Excel follow these steps: 

Step 1: Double Click on the Error bars in the chart you want to edit. 

Step 2: To change the appearance of the error bar like colour and width, choose the Fill & Line 

tab. There, you will have the option to change everything about the appearance of the 

error bar. 

Step 3: Click on the Error Bars options tab to change the type, direction and style of the error 

bars

Suggested Reads:

How to Group Worksheets in Excel? (In 3 Simple Steps)

How to Shade Every Other Row in Excel? (5 Best Methods)

How to Use the Excel Fill Handle Easily? (Top 3 Uses with Examples)

Let’s Wrap Up

We are at the end of this guide on how to add error bars in Excel. If you have any questions about this or any other Excel feature, let us know in the comments. We are always happy to help. 

If you need more high-quality Excel guides, please check out our free Excel resources centre.

Ready to dive deep into Excel? Simon Sez IT has been teaching Excel for over ten years. For a low, monthly fee you can get access to 100+ IT training courses. Click here for advanced Excel courses with in-depth training modules.

I’ve written about Excel chart error bars in Error Bars in Excel Charts for Classic Excel and in Error Bars in Excel 2007 Charts for New Excel. Both articles contained instructions for adding custom error bar values for individual points, but judging from the emails I receive, a separate article on custom error bars is needed. You cannot add custom error bar values to a single point in a chart. However, you can individual custom error bar values to all points in a plotted series. You need to put all of the individual error bar values into a range of the worksheet. I usually put these values in the same table as the actual X and Y values

Manually Defining Custom Error Bars

Sample Data and Charts

Suppose we have the following data: X and Y values, plus extra columns with positive and negative error bar values for both X and Y directions. The data is set up so that, for example, cells C2 and D2 have the values for the positive and negative horizontal (X) error bars for the point defined by X and Y values in A2 and B2. Cells E2 and F2 have the values for the positive and negative vertical (Y) error bars for this point. The series is plotted using all the data at once, with X in A2:A6 and Y in B2:6. The error bars are also drawn using all the error bar data at once: C2:C6 and D2:D6 for horizontal and E2:E6 and F2:F6 for vertical.

The chart itself is easy: create an XY chart using the data in columns A and B.

The protocols for adding custom error bars differ between Classic Excel and new Excel. After following the appropriate protocol below, the chart will have custom error bars on each data point, based on the additional columns of data. This chart shows just the Y error bars, to show clearly that each point has custom values different from other points:

This chart shows the X and Y error bars:

Important Note

A single custom error bar value cannot be added to a single data point, and custom error bar values cannot be added to a series of data points one point at a time. If you select a single value for your custom error bars, this single value will be applied to all points in the series. A whole set of custom error bar values can be added to an entire series in one operation. Put your custom values into a range parallel to your X and Y values as I’ve done with this sample data, then use the manual technique or the utility to add all the values to the chart series in one step.

New Excel (2007 and later)

It is harder to apply error bars in Excel 2007 than in earlier versions. There is no convenient tab on the Format Series dialog. The Error Bar tab(s) as well as the tabs for Data Label, Up/Down Bars, High/Low Lines, and other features have been removed to make them more discoverable, at least that’s what we were told. To discover these features in Excel 2007, select the chart and navigate to the Chart Tools > Layout contextual tab. Click on the Error Bars button, and scratch your head while you try to decipher the options. Finally, select the More Error Bars Options at the bottom of the list. X (if it’s an XY chart) and Y error bars with initial constant values of 1 are added to the chart series, with the Y error bars selected, and the Format Error Bars dialog is displayed with the Vertical Error Bars tab showing. (If the chart has more than one series, and you had not specifically selected one series, there is an intermediate dialog asking which series to work with.) This dialog doesn’t look too unfamiliar. But there is no obvious way to switch to the horizontal error bars. We are used to having two tabs, one for the vertical error bars, and also one for the horizontal error bars. Remember that Microsoft made these chart formatting dialogs non-modal, so you can click on objects behind the dialogs. Click on the horizontal error bars to change the dialog. To assign custom values to the error bars, select the horizontal or vertical error bars, and on the Horizontal or Vertical Error Bars tab of the Format Error Bars dialog. Move the dialog so it does not cover the range containing your custom values, then click on the Custom option button, and click on Specify Value. A small child dialog appears with entry boxes for selection of the custom error bar values. (It was easier in 2003, where data entry took place directly on the main dialog, but we’re not talking about productivity today.) By default, each field contains a one element array with the element value equal to one. You can enter another constant value, and you don’t need to type the equals sign or curly brackets; Excel will insert them. More likely you want to select a range. Make sure you delete the entire contents of the entry box before selecting a range, or at least select it all, or Excel will think you meant to enter something like the following, which will lead to an error message. The edit box is so narrow, that you cannot see the entire expression at once, and it will be difficult to find this error.

={1}+Sheet1!$D$2:$D$6

If you want the value to be zero, enter zero. Don’t completely clear an entry box, because Excel will think you simply forgot and it will retain the previous value.

Classic Excel (2003 and earlier)

It’s easy to add error bars in Excel 97 through 2003. Bring up the Format Series dialog, by double clicking on the series, by right clicking on the series and choosing Selected Object, by selecting the series and choosing Selected Data Series from the Format menu, or by selecting the series and clicking the shortcut, Ctrl+1 (numeral one). The dialog has a tab for Y Error Bars, and if it’s an XY data series, there is also a tab for X error bars. To define custom error bars, click in the + or – data entry box (no need to select the Custom option button, Classic Excel does this automatically), then select the range containing the custom error bar values using your mouse. If you need only one value for all of the points, you can select a single cell, or even type the value you want. This seems redundant, given the Fixed Value option, but this way you can use different positive and negative fixed values or a custom range for one direction and a constant for the other. This is what the dialog looks like with ranges used to define the custom error bar values. If you want to leave an error bar off the chart, you can leave the data entry box blank.

Notes

The error bars overwhelm the data. To restore the importance of the data itself, use a lighter color for the error bars. Lighten up the axes while you’re at it. If any custom values are negative, the corresponding error bar will be drawn in the opposite direction: a positive error bar with a negative value will be drawn in the negative direction.

Programmatically Defining Custom Error Bars

The command to add error bars using Excel is:

{Series}.ErrorBar Direction:={xlX or xlY}, Include:=xlBoth, Type:=xlCustom, _
    Amount:={positive values}, MinusValues:={negative values}

Values can be a single numerical value, for example, 1, an comma-separated array of numerical values in curly braces, such as {1,2,3,4}, or a range address in R1C1 notation. For values in Sheet1!$G$2:$G$10, enter the address as Sheet1!R2C7:R10C7. Combine both plus and minus in the same command. In Excel 2007, if you don’t want to show a particular error bar, you must enter a value of zero in this command. In 2003, you can enter a null string “”. In Excel 2003, the range address must begin with an equals sign, =Sheet1!R2C7:R10C7; Excel 2007 accepts the address with or without the equals sign. Single values or arrays may be entered with or without the equals sign in either version of Excel.

Error Bar Utility

To make it easier to use error bars in Excel 2007 (and in Classic Excel), I’ve built a small utility, which you can download and use for free. It’s found in ErrorBars.zip. This zip file contains two versions, ErrorBars.xls for Excel 97 through 2003, and ErrorBars.xlam for Excel 2007. Install this utility by following the instructions in Installing an Excel Add-In or in Installing an Add-In in Excel 2007. In Classic Excel, the utility places a new item, Add Error Bars, at the bottom of the chart series context menu. All you have to do is right click on the series and select Add Error Bars. Despite all the assurances from Microsoft that context menus work the same in Excel 2007 as in earlier versions, you cannot add an item to an Excel 2007 chart-related context menu. What I’ve done instead is to add an Error Bars item to the end of each of the three Chart Tools contextual ribbon tabs. I know the new philosophy of Office is to place a command in only one place in the whole user interface. I prefer the old style philosophy, however, which is to place the command in every place it may be relevant. I never know where I may be when I want to use a command, and some people remember different hiding places than I do. Whether in Excel 2007 or in earlier versions, click on the added command, and the utility behaves the same. Up pops a simple dialog with four data entry boxes, for plus and minus Y error bars, and for plus and minus X error bars. If the chart type is not XY, the X error bar entry boxes are disabled. You can select a range or enter a constant into the entry boxes. Leave a box blank to omit the corresponding error bars. I hope that this tutorial and the associated utility will make your life easier when working with error bars in Excel 2007.