How to Add a Trendline in Excel without Desktop App

Question

Hi,

I am trying to add a trendline through my Mac laptop, however, I am for some reason not able to access the Desktop app through the "Open in Desktop App" option on the upper right corner in my display. I am not exactly sure what the term would be for what platform of Excel I am using, but I think that it is termed as "Sharepoint". I use Excel through a school account that provides other Office 365 options, such as Word, etc. I suspect that the provided package by my school may not be inclusive of the Desktop app as each time I try to open it, it just provides the option to "Resume Editing Here", which is referring to what I think to be "Sharepoint". My goal is not necessarily to have access to the Desktop app as that just may simply not be included in what my school offers but rather to be able to insert a trendline on my graphs. I brought up the Desktop app since I know that adding trendlines can be done through there.

A common step with adding trendlines is the "+" sign that shows up when the graph is clicked on. That feature does not show up for me when I click on my graph, which I also suspect to be since it is not done through the Desktop app. Any help with finding a way to add trendlines through the described format of Excel that I am in would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

Hi Michael3423,

Thank you for querying in this forum.

According to your description, it seems that you are using SharePoint Online and opening Excel file via Excel Online. And your school doesn’t provide the license to use Office applications, so you may not click Open in Desktop App.

And you want to add Trendline in Excel web application.

If my understanding is right, we’re afraid that there is no out of box way to achieve your requirement. And Trendline this option is not available in Excel Online. We have also tested it on our side, after inserting chart, we may not find the option to select Trendline.

Using Excel Online in a web browser looks a lot like the Excel desktop app. However, there are still some differences between them. For example, not all file formats are supported, and some features may not work or work differently than the desktop app. In Excel application for Mac, we can go to View > Print Layout > Chart Design > Add Chart Element > Trendline. For more details, you can refer to this article: Add a trend or moving average line to a chart.

We’re sorry that it doesn’t meet your requirement. We do understand the inconvenience caused and apologize for it.

We understand the situation and you make a great point. To address your concern about the situation, we’d suggest you kindly vote this UserVoice: be able to add trendline on excel online. This is the best platform to let us hear from you and make our products and services better for you and others.

At the same time, the related team engineer mentioned that we’re currently rolling out a format task pane for charts and are investigating incorporating this feature as we continue to support more formatting capabilities on Excel Web. If they have any updates, they will post back, so we’d suggest you monitor this UserVoice.

If the scenario above is not consistent with yours, you can also post back and provide more details about your requirement, and we will try our best to help you.

Your understanding and patience will be highly appreciated.

Best Regards,

Sukie