Smooth area chart possible?

Hi Everyone,
Does anyone know if it is possible to create an area graph that has smooth lines instead of jagged ones? I've searched everywhere and can't find any information on it. I will explain what I am trying to achieve as maybe there is another way. I have many series of data. I plot them on a smooth line chart and it looks good. What I am trying to do is shade the area between the lowest and highest values on the chart. Basically, I want to show each line individually but highlight the range using a background shading. What I have done so far is created two new series of data which is the calculated lower bound and upper bound and then plotted them on the graph. I thought that if I could change the type for the lower and upper bounds to an area chart, then I could simulate the shading by using a color for the upper bound and white(my background color) for the lower bound. It works, but the area chart type only comes with jagged edges, so it doesn't look good. Any ideas?

Thanks!

Hi,

Take a look here and may be use an XY scatter chart with curved lines?

http://peltiertech.com/Excel/Charts/XYAreaChart2.html

I'll take a closer look, but it appears to me to be the same concept that I have already tried, except with a scatter instead of a line graph. It is basically suggesting that I layer a series of data as an area chart along with the scatter data. As soon as I use the area chart type, the edges become jagged.

I'll keep looking....

Originally Posted by rjbarnez

I know I'm super late to the party but I've got a possible solution and hopefully this will be useful to someone

Duplicate the data you are using the in the area chart and add it to the chart as another data series.
Now select this new series and change the chart type to a line for this series only.
Check the smoothed line option and hey presto!
Once you've bumped up the line thickness your smoothed line should sit on top of your area series and make it appear smoothed.

Attachment 409174

The problem with this is that you're taking an approach that un-clarifies the display of the data (smoothed lines, and applying another approach to further un-clarify it (thick lines).

Smoothing a line makes a chart "look" nicer, but it may cause the line to extend into regions where there is no data and where no data should even be expected. I've written about this on my blog, in Smooth Talking Lies.

If all you want is a nice looking chart, maybe Microsoft Paint is better than Microsoft Excel.