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Shaded Ranges in Excel

Elizabeth Ricks shows how to create shaded ranges in Excel:

We can see there’s clear seasonality in this business—overall volume is highest in the summer and each outing type generally follows the same monthly pattern. Let’s say you manage the Family rentals and you’d like to compare your monthly volume to what you’re seeing across the entire fleet. 

For the purpose of this tactical illustration, let’s assume the shape of the data—relative peaks and valleys—is more important than the specifics of each category individually. If that’s the case, I can simplify by showing a shaded region to depict the range of absolute passengers each month.

This technique is excellent when you have a large number of lines but only care about one versus the norm, and individual lines would be too distracting.