Analyzing rows of data in a spreadsheet file can very much boring. To make the analyzing process be easier and fun, you can turn your data into a visual form. Google Sheets has a feature that allows you to turn your data into a wide range of charts. If you are working with data that involves geographic area, you can turn your data into an interactive geo chart.
The feature to create a geo chart is available on Google Sheets by default, no need to install an add-on. In this example, we will show you to create an interactive geo chart about life expectancy per country in 2015. The data we are going to use is based on the data on Wikipedia. We will narrow down the data to show the life expectancy in the European countries. The geographic areas supported by Google Sheets are world and continent. The geo chart we are going to create below will display the life expectancy per country in Europe. When you hover your mouse over a country on the map, the number (represents age) will show up.
Getting started
To get started, you can prepare the raw format of your data first. You can use the data from Wikipedia as we use in this example or your own data. Here is the raw format of the data we use in this example.
Once your data is ready, highlight the data range you want to turn it into a chart and go to Insert -> Chart.
Your data will immediately turn into a chart, but not a geo chart. To change it to a geo chart, click the dropdown menu on the Chart type option on the right panel and select Geo chart on the Map section.
Google Sheets allows you to download the generated geo chart into a PNG format or publish it on the web. To do so, click the chart area to turn it into editing mode. Then, click the three-dot icon on the top-right corner of the chart area and select your option.
How to customize your chart
When creating a geo chart in Google Sheets, your map is set to the global mode (World) by default. You can set the map to a continent mode by selecting a continent. To do so, double-click the chart and go to the Customize tab on the right panel and open the Geo option. Select a continent from the dropdown menu. From here, you can also set the color of the map.
To set the background color of the chart, as well as the border color, you can open the Chart style option.
By default, Google Sheets uses the top row of the highlighted data range as the header. The number of this row will be displayed every time you hover your mouse over a country on the map. To disable it, you can uncheck the Use row n as headers option on the Setup tab on the right panel.
If you want to add more data range, you can click the table icon on the Data range option under the Setup tab on the right panel.