How to create animated charts

Insert a chart, select it, open Animations and choose an effect such as Wipe, then Effect Options → Sequence By Series or By Category so the bars or lines arrive in turn. On Windows, File → Export → Create a Video saves an MP4 with the animation. On a Mac, PowerPoint’s movie export doesn’t play animation effects, so the chart arrives all at once. Keynote on a Mac does keep its builds in exported movies; see how to animate a chart in Keynote.

Good for: slides you’re presenting anyway. Limits: effects are generic wipes and fades, values don’t count up, and nothing moves between periods. Full steps: how to animate a chart in PowerPoint.

Neither app animates charts. The usual route is to copy an Excel chart into PowerPoint with Paste → Use Destination Theme & Link Data and animate it there, or to paste the cells into a dedicated tool. Google Sheets can publish a sheet as a CSV link, which this site can read directly. See Excel or Google Sheets chart to video.

Add a chart from Elements → Charts, edit its data, then use Animate for an entrance effect. Canva also has a dedicated Bar race chart element. Download with Share → Download and the MP4 Video or GIF file type. It needs an account, and charts other than the bar race animate as whole elements rather than value by value. Steps: how to animate a chart in Canva.

Draw the chart with shape layers and animate it by hand: Trim Paths for lines and pie rings, Scale with the anchor point at the base for bars. For real data, import a CSV or JSON file and link properties with expressions. The result can look like anything you want, but even a simple chart takes an hour, and it needs a paid Creative Cloud subscription. Steps: how to animate a graph in After Effects.

You need a video file of real data, quickly

Use a data-driven tool such as the one on this page. It handles races, counting numbers and rescaling axes for you, and exports MP4, GIF or transparent WebM.

The chart only appears in a live presentation

PowerPoint or Keynote entrance effects are enough, and you keep everything in one file.

It’s a branded piece for TV or a launch film

After Effects, ideally starting from a data-driven export (a transparent WebM overlay works well) so you only design around it.

1. Write down the one point the chart should make; animation should reveal it, not decorate it.
2. Keep it short: 10–30 seconds for social media, with a hold at the end so the final values can be read.
3. Pick the chart for the data first: a race for rankings over time (see how to make a bar chart race), a line for trends, a pie for shares of one whole, a bubble chart for three measures at once. Then animate.