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Charts & Visualization Features

Create presentation-ready workbook visuals from your data. These tools build and format charts, add interactive filtering, apply visual rules, and capture or annotate workbook content.

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Charts (43 operations)

  • Create visuals: Build charts from ranges or worksheet Tables, or live PivotCharts linked to regular or Data Model PivotTables.
  • Configure data: Replace a regular chart's source, add or remove series, and control how rows, columns, blanks, and hidden cells are plotted.
  • Explain results: Set titles, axes, labels, legends, trendlines, and supported error bars.
  • Shape presentation: Use combo charts and secondary axes, styles, series/point formatting, and chart/plot-area formatting.
  • Match chart text: Set and inspect font name, size, bold, italic, and text colour on existing chart elements, including PivotCharts.
  • Place titles and format lines: Position and align chart titles, style primary or secondary axis lines, and show or hide chart and plot-area borders.
  • Arrange and export: Position charts against worksheet ranges, inspect their actual data and bounds, and export native image files.

A live PivotChart follows its PivotTable's fields and filters. Its series are not managed like a regular chart's series. Some formatting and error-bar settings also depend on the chart type, and Excel cannot read back every setting it accepts.

Choose the source and units deliberately. A chart of displayed PivotTable cells is not a live PivotChart, and a successful creation does not establish correct totals or nonoverlapping placement.

Chart-building guidance

Slicers (18 operations)

  • Filter interactively: Create and manage visual filters for PivotTables or worksheet Tables, including model-backed PivotTables.
  • Filter dates: Add native PivotTable timelines and select calendar-date ranges.
  • Share compatible filters: Inspect and change connections between a PivotTable control and compatible shared-cache PivotTables.
  • Arrange controls: Inspect and update control position, dimensions, appearance, and supported layout settings.
  • Match a brand: Copy a slicer style, set colours and button-state formatting, list available styles, and apply one without changing layout or filters.

A Table slicer filters its Table, not a separate PivotTable cache. PivotTable slicers and timelines affect only connected PivotTables; matching field names do not establish cache compatibility. Removing a control does not necessarily clear its filter. Verify both the selection and the resulting data.

Slicer and timeline guidance

Conditional Formatting (7 operations)

  • Highlight meaning: Create value- or formula-based rules and supported visual scales, bars, and icons.
  • Inspect existing rules: Read rule coverage, priority, and applicable formatting.
  • Make targeted changes: Update or remove selected rules and change their priority without clearing unrelated rules.

Rules interact through their coverage and order. Select an existing rule from a fresh listing before editing it; priority is not a permanent identifier. Excel can normalize formulas and settings, and failed edits can leave partial changes. Read the resulting rules rather than assuming the request was fully applied.

Conditional-formatting guidance

Screenshot (2 operations)

  • Inspect appearance: Capture a selected range or a worksheet's used cells and embedded charts from the live Excel window.
  • Share an image: Receive an image in MCP or return/save an image through the CLI.

Capture briefly shows Excel and brings it forward. It requires an unlocked interactive desktop and can fail in a disconnected Remote Desktop session. Protected sheets are supported without modifying the workbook or clipboard. Large areas can be stitched or truncated; check the result before claiming that the whole sheet was visually inspected.

Screenshots are optional. Data-only and unattended jobs do not need to fail because visual capture is unavailable.

Visual verification guidance

Drawing Objects & Sparklines (20 operations)

  • Annotate worksheets: Add images, shapes, text boxes, connectors, and supported Forms controls.
  • Manage layout: Inspect and update objects, group or ungroup them, align/distribute them, duplicate them, and change stacking order.
  • Show compact trends: Create and manage line, column, or win/loss sparklines in worksheet cells.

Object layout affects selected supported objects, not charts or every item on the sheet. Grouping can change native membership; use the returned names and state rather than assuming the old structure survives. Protected drawing objects and macro-bound duplication have restrictions.

ActiveX/OLE controls and macro assignment are intentionally excluded.

Drawing and layout guidance