Power BI – How to Create a Stacked Area Chart

A stacked area chart is formed by combining the line chart, with the shaded area under that line. This chart is generally, used when we want to see the trends, that which field is performing better, in a particular time frame. For example, considering the stock prices of different companies, in the past 5 months, then a stacked area chart can be very useful, to see this trend. In this article, we will learn how to create a stacked area chart in Power BI. 

Creating a Stacked Area Chart in Power BI

A Stacked Area chart has multiple options while creating, and customizing it. We will take a look at each of the options. For example, we are given a data set of Employees, and we want to make a Stack Area chart, consisting of legends, and small multiples, segregated by year. We will explore each option while creating this stacked area chart. 

The following are the steps: 

Step 1: Given the dataset, Employee. The dataset comprises 5 columns i.e. Department, Employee Id, Employee Name, Salary, and Year. 

Step 2: Under the Visualizations section, click on the Stacked area chart. 

Step 3: An empty Stacked area chart is created. This stacked area chart does not contain any fields. Our next task is to add columns to it. 

Step 4: Adding X-Axis in the Stacked area chart. Drag and drop Employee Id into the X-Axis. Currently, we cannot see any changes, in the chart, but the changes will be visible when we will add Y-Axis to it. 

Step 5: Adding Y-Axis in the Stacked area chart. Drag and drop the Sum of Salary into the Y-Axis. We can see that the stacked area chart has been allotted the sum of Salary on its y-axis. For example, Arushi, with employee id 1 has a salary of 50K, and Gautam with employee id 2 has a salary of 40K, etc. 

Step 6:  Legends, help sub-categorize the data. It is preferred to use legends, on categorical data. Drag and drop Department, under the Legend section. We can see in the image, that, each department, gets its own color. For example, the IT department got a purple color, and hence the Salary of Arushi and Gautam is shown in purple. 

Step 7: Our next task, is to add Tooltips in the Stacked area chart. Tooltips provide additional information that we want to see, whenever we hover at a data point. In the below image, we can see that, we have hovered at employee id 1, and then we can view only the Salary gained by her. The Salary data appeared, as we have added, these measures previously. Now, think what if we want to add Employee Name, and Department to this list? 

Step 8:  Drag and drop Employee Name and Department under Tooltips. Now, again hover over employee id 1 salary. We can see that Employee Name, Arushi, and Department IT have been added to the list. 

Step 9: Small multiple is a feature, introduced in December 2020. It helps segregate the graphs, on the basis of a measure. Small multiples create smaller versions of each graph. For example, if we are adding Year in the small multiples, then each year present in the dataset, will display a separate graph, as shown in the image. 

Note: Line charts, bar charts, stacked area chart, and different combined combinations chart also have small multiples feature.  

Step 10: Below gif shows, all the graphs, for each year. We have successfully created a stacked area chart in power bi.