Thermometer Chart in Excel

This is what we want:

Steps to Create a Thermometer Chart in Excel

1. Make sure your data is setup correctly. You need to have a cell that displays a percentage for the amount that has been completed so far.  It doesn't matter how you generate this percentage cell so long as you have it.
   
2. Select the percentage cell and go to the Insert tab and click Column and then click Clustered Column
   
   
3. You will now have a chart that looks something like this:
   
4. Now we need to work on the formatting.
   First, right-click the left axis, the one with the percentages on it, and then click Format Axis...
   
   
5. In the Axis Options section, click Fixed for both the Minimum and Maximum options. For Minimum, input 0 and for Maximum input 1. Then hit Close.
   
6. Right-click the blue column and click Format Data Series...
   
   
7. Change Gap Width to 0% and then click Close.
   
8. Your chart will now look like this:
   
9. Click the chart's legend and hit Delete; click the horizontal gridlines and hit Delete; click the x-axis label and hit delete. You can click the title and delete that too if you want. (You can also do all of this by going to the Layout tab and clicking Legend > None ; Axis Titles > Primary Horizontal Axis Title > None ; Gridlines > Primary Horizontal Gridlines > None)
   
10. Right-click over the center of the chart and click Format Plot Area...
    
    
11. In the window that opens click Border Color from the left side of the window and then click Solid Line.  You can also choose the color of the line here if you would like to do that. Then click Close.
    
12. Resize the chart by clicking the side of it and making it narrower so it will look more like a thermometer.
    
    Changing the height and width of the chart in this step will change how the thermometer looks quite a bit.
13. Go to the Insert tab and click Shapes and click the Oval option.
    
14. Move your mouse over the bottom of the chart and click and drag until the oval is over the bottom of the chart. If the oval is not aligned, just click and drag it after you have created it.
    
15. With the oval still selected click the Format tab and click Shape Outline and then No Outline
    
    
16. That's it!
    

You can continue to play around with the formatting to get whatever look you want but now you know how to make the basic version of the thermometer chart in Excel.

Notes

Download the sample Excel file for this tutorial to see this thermometer chart in Excel.