Inserting charts into Excel

Option 1 — Paste a PNG manually

Save the chart, then in Excel: Insert → Pictures → from file. Fastest for one-offs.

Option 2 — =PY() chart

Covered in Module 8. Best for charts that should refresh when the underlying Excel data changes.

Option 3 — Programmatic with openpyxl

import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from openpyxl import load_workbook
from openpyxl.drawing.image import Image

# Generate the chart
df = pd.read_csv("monthly.csv")
fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(7, 3))
df.plot(x="month", y="revenue", ax=ax, marker="o")
plt.tight_layout()
fig.savefig("monthly.png", dpi=150)
plt.close(fig)

# Insert into the workbook
df.to_excel("report.xlsx", index=False, sheet_name="Data")
wb = load_workbook("report.xlsx")
ws = wb.create_sheet("Chart")
img = Image("monthly.png")
ws.add_image(img, "B2")
wb.save("report.xlsx")

Walkthrough: monthly report builder

def make_chart(df, kind, filename, title):
    fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(7, 3))
    df.plot(kind=kind, ax=ax, color="#217346")
    ax.set_title(title)
    plt.tight_layout()
    fig.savefig(filename, dpi=150)
    plt.close(fig)