Area

Area charts are useful for discovering trends over time, where the values you are comparing are typically hierarchical. If one or more of the chart areas will dip below other areas, then the resulting chart may not be very useful, and you would be better served by a line or bar chart. Area charts are much like line charts, except the area between the lines and the X axis is filled in with either solid, non-overlapping; or transparent, overlapping colors. Related data sets can be assembled in groups (series) for easy comparison. If you need to make comparisons between X and Y values that are not directly related in your data source, you must use an XY area chart instead.

An example of an Area chart showing several chart properties.