To get started, open your Excel spreadsheet. If you don’t already have a chart created, highlight the data you want to use and insert a chart.

Excel fills all charts with solid colors by default. Instead of solid colors, you can use images to fill in each data series or point.

To select a data series, click once on a data point. To select a data point, click again on a data point. Once you’ve made your selection, right-click. From the popup menu that appears, select either “Format Data Series…” or “Format Data Point…” based on your selection.

A window will open with various formatting options. Go to “Fill” and then the “Picture” or “Picture or Texture” tab, depending on your version of Excel. Click on the button that says “Choose a Picture…” You can choose from a library of stock images, or select a picture from anywhere on your computer.

Once you’ve selected an image, you can adjust its transparency using the slider underneath the image thumbnail. You can also format the image to either stretch the width of the data area, or stack (in other words, repeat). You can even adjust the scale of the stacked images using the “Units/Picture” setting.

That’s all it takes to fill your Excel chart with images. If you later decide to remove the images, you can right click on the data point again and select a solid color instead.