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How to Make a Treemap Chart in Google Sheets

Treemap charts are useful for providing a hierarchical view of data that allows you to easily identify patterns.

When working in Google Sheets, treemap charts are definitely a less often used form of data visualization compared to other kinds of graphs or charts.

If you want to create a treemap chart, you may be wondering how it is done. Luckily, it is very easy.

In this tutorial, I will show you how to make a treemap chart in Google Sheets

 

Creating a Treemap Chart

In order to create a treemap chart, we first need to have our data entered into our spreadsheet.

In this tutorial, I will be making a treemap chart with this example data:

Treemap-data

In the data above, I have a table with the different departments in a business, the category of the department, and the number of staff in each department.

What I want to do is create a treemap chart so we can visualize the size of each department compared to each other.

The most important part of creating a treemap chart is making sure your data is in the right format.

This is what my data needs to look like in order to create the chart:

treemap-chart-formatted-data

Here are some important notes about formatting your data for creating the chart:

  • In row 1, we can only have one header in column A. This will be the header that is displayed in the chart. 
  • There should be no header in column B
  • In row 1, column C, I have the total number of staff. In my spreadsheet, this is just a formula (=C2+C5+C8+C10). You have to have the total in this cell
  • You will also need subheader rows. In my spreadsheet, these are the tan rows (2, 5, 8, 10)
  • Subheader rows in column A will need to have the category
  • Subheader rows in column B will need to have the parent label (“Department” in this example)
  • Subheader rows in column C will need to have the sum of the values that correspond to each section. In this example, that means my subheader rows have the sum of the total amount of staff in each department

Once we have our data formatted properly, then we can begin to create the chart.

Here are the steps to do this:

1. First, highlight all of your data that will be used to create the chart

treemap-1

2. Then, in the top menu select Insert>Chart

treemap-2

3. In the Chart editor on the right hand side, navigate to the Chart type section and select the drop-down arrow

treemap-3

4. Select the Treemap chart which is under the “other” section

treemap-4

5. You should now see a treemap chart created for the data that you highlighted

treemap-5

Closing Thoughts

The hardest part of creating this kind of chart is formatting your data properly so that it will display correctly. Creating the actual chart is easy once your data is in the right format.

Once you have your chart created, it will show the actual values if you hover over any of the rectangles in the chart.

You can also click on it to zoom in.

If you want to customize your chart click on the “Customize” tab in the Chart editor.

From there you will find options to change fonts, colors, and more.

More Google Sheets Tutorials:
How to Make a Pareto Chart
How to Make a Bubble Chart
How to Make a Scorecard Chart