Add Charts from Data

SmartDraw's data chart visualizer allows you to generate a pie chart, bar graph, line chart, area chart, donut chart, and more from an Excel file, csv, or tab delimited text file.

Watch the video to see how you can use the data chart visualizer.

Open the Data Chart Visualizer

Click the + icon to switch the SmartPanel into the Insert Content view.

Once on the Insert Content view, select the Add Data Visualizer section and click on Data Chart.

Choose Chart Type

Choose the type of chart you want to generate. You can select from line chart, area chart, pie chart, donut chart, bar graphs, and more.

Import Data

You can upload a data file from your desktop or link to a URL data source. Learn more about formatting your data for uploading by reading this help article.

Connect to Public Data via URL

You can also get data from an online source like Google Sheets, as long as the data is publicly available.

To import data from a URL, first you'll need to get a share URL from the data source. Open a document in Google Sheets and go to the File menu, select Share, then Publish to web. Make sure you choose Comma-separated values (.csv) in the second drop-down and hit Publish.

Copy the URL from Google and paste it into the dialog under URL in SmartDraw.

Update Data

If you use a URL as your data source, you can turn on auto-updating to automatically refresh your chart.

Switch to the Data control on the SmartPanel using the database icon.

Under Actions, choose Update Data Table.

Check the Auto-update box to have SmartDraw automatically update your data.