Excel Help

Question

i want to change one of my series into an area on my scatter graph with smooth lines but when i press change chart type and then combo, there is no drop down menu, how do i fix this?

Answer 1

Hi, Farah Ganesan

That happens because your bell curve is an XY scatter line, and in Excel Solid Fill does not apply to chart lines, only to fillable elements like markers or area-type series.

So nothing is “broken”, Excel just will not shade the original scatter line directly.

Here are some suggestions you can try:

It is recommended that you add a helper series just for the part of the curve you want shaded, usually with an IF formula so only that section returns values.

Then add that helper series to the chart and plot that helper as an Area series on the secondary axis, while keeping the main bell curve as the smooth scatter line.

After that, give the helper series a semi-transparent fill and no border, and hide the secondary axis if needed.

If the X values are evenly spaced, a simpler fallback is to rebuild it as a Line chart + helper Area series instead.

Thank you for your patience in reading, I hope this information has been helpful to you. 

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Answer 2

Excel does not support mixing an XY (scatter) series with an Area chart type in a single combo chart, which is why no drop-down appears for changing that series to Area in the Combo dialog.

Only compatible chart types can be combined there (for example, different line/column types, or multiple scatter types). XY (scatter) and Area are different chart families, so the interface does not offer Area as an option for a scatter-series.

To highlight a range under one scatter series, use one of these supported approaches instead:

1. Keep all series as XY (scatter) and use “Scatter with smooth lines” for the series that should look like an area, then format the line and markers (e.g., thicker line, semi-transparent fill on markers or additional helper series) rather than changing its chart type to Area.
2. If an Area chart is required, recreate the chart as an Area chart (not scatter) with appropriately arranged data, but this will no longer be a true XY scatter chart.

Because of these chart-type limitations, the missing drop-down is expected behavior rather than something that can be “fixed.”

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References:

• Change the chart type of an existing chart
• Create a combination chart
• Available chart types in Office
• Discontinued features and changed functionality in Excel 2013