How to make an animated chart video from a spreadsheet
An animated chart video turns rows of data into a short motion graphic — bars overtaking each other, a line drawing itself, percentages counting up. To make one in Furlen you upload a CSV or Excel file, pick one of the story angles it proposes, and export an MP4. Furlen recomputes every number in the headline from your source rows before rendering, so the video cannot state a figure your spreadsheet does not support.
What data do you need?
At minimum one numeric column and one column to plot it against — a date for change over time, or a category for a comparison. Furlen reads .csv and .xlsx directly, plus pasted text, Google Sheets links and Wikipedia table URLs. Headers are detected automatically, so a file with title rows above the real header still works.
How do you make one?
Upload a CSV or Excel file, paste data, or link a Google Sheet or Wikipedia table. Furlen profiles the columns automatically, detects headers, and skips preamble rows.
AI proposes a few story angles with verified numbers. Choose one and fine-tune text, colors, and motion in the editor.
Render to MP4, PNG stills, carousel images, PPTX slides, or an embeddable player. Free exports carry a small watermark; paid plans are clean.
Which chart type should you use?
The shape of your data decides it, and Furlen recommends a type from the columns it finds. Each section below is a real Furlen render from a raw CSV.
How do you make a bar chart race?
A bar chart race animates a ranking as it changes over time — bars overtake each other frame by frame. Give Furlen three columns: a time column, a category column (the racers) and a numeric column. It detects them automatically, orders the frames, and writes a headline describing who actually overtook whom, recomputed from your rows.
How do you make an animated line chart?
An animated line chart draws a trend as it happened, with values counting up to their final figure. It needs one time column and at least one numeric column — revenue by month, users by week, temperature by day. Furlen picks the biggest genuine change in the series and captions it, rather than asserting growth that the numbers do not show.
When should you use a bar chart instead of a line?
Bars compare categories at one point in time — channels, regions, products. Lines show change over time. If your data has a category column and a number but no time column, a bar chart is the honest choice, and Furlen will recommend it rather than inventing a time axis. Two columns are enough.
When is a pie chart the right choice?
Only when the values are parts of one whole — market share, budget split, traffic sources — and there are roughly six slices or fewer. Furlen computes the percentages from your rows, so you do not pre-calculate shares. If the values are not a share of a single total, it suggests bars instead, because a pie of unrelated numbers is misleading by construction.
How do you show where users drop off?
A funnel shows step-by-step conversion with the biggest leak flagged. Give Furlen a step column and a count column; it derives each step-to-step conversion rate from your rows rather than estimating, and highlights the largest single drop. Funnels are built in Furlen Stories, not the Charts studio — the studio renders line, area, bar, bar race, pie and scatter.
Can you use an Excel file?
Yes, directly — there is no need to convert to CSV first. Upload an .xlsx and Furlen profiles the sheet, detects the header row, handles European decimal formats such as 1.234,56, preserves zero-padded codes like postcodes, and warns when a workbook has multiple sheets so the wrong one is not read silently. Raw transactional logs are aggregated into a countable breakdown rather than plotted row by row.
Can you chart public data without a spreadsheet?
Yes. Describe what you want and Furlen pulls the series from a live source, with the citation attached to the chart. These are connected today:
- World Bank
- — GDP, population and ~1,400 development indicators for 200+ economies
- IMF World Economic Outlook
- — macro forecasts running to roughly 2031
- FRED (St. Louis Fed)
- — US monthly series — CPI, unemployment, rates
- Eurostat
- — EU monthly HICP inflation and unemployment
- UN Comtrade
- — bilateral merchandise trade flows between any two reporters
- SEC EDGAR
- — US-listed company filings, straight from XBRL
- ESEF, DART and EDINET
- — EU, Korean and Japanese filers in their reported currency
- WHO Global Health Observatory
- — life expectancy and immunisation coverage
How does Furlen check the numbers are right?
Every claim the AI writes is recomputed from your source rows before export, and the check runs server-side so it cannot be skipped from the browser. A claim that does not reconcile blocks the export rather than shipping with a caveat. You can open the working behind any figure — the formula, the exact rows used, and the rounding rule applied — on the Truth Engine page.
Common questions
How do you turn a spreadsheet into a video?
Upload a .csv or .xlsx at furlen.pro/analyze. Furlen profiles the columns, proposes a few story angles with verified numbers, and renders an MP4 — usually under five minutes, with no video editor involved.
Is it free?
Yes to try. Previews and watermarked exports are free and need no signup. Paid plans remove the watermark and unlock clean HD exports; prices are on the pricing page.
Does it work with messy spreadsheets?
Yes. Furlen auto-detects headers, skips preamble rows above them, handles European number formats like 1.234,56, preserves zero-padded codes, and aggregates raw transactional logs. Where something is genuinely ambiguous it asks instead of guessing.
Do you need to convert Excel to CSV first?
No. Furlen reads .xlsx directly, alongside CSV, pasted data, Google Sheets links and Wikipedia table URLs.
Will the video show your real numbers?
Yes, and that is the point. Every headline and caption is recomputed from your source rows before export, and a claim that contradicts the data cannot be exported — the export is blocked rather than watermarked with a warning.
Do you need design skills?
No. Pick a template or let the AI plan the story; colour, motion and layout are handled. Brand kits apply your own colours and fonts across every scene.
Start from a verified dataset
Ten of the built-in templates use real published data — NVIDIA quarterly revenue, IEA electric-car sales, IDC smartphone share — each with its source, the period it covers, and the CSV to download.