How do I embed an interactive chart in Google Docs?

You can't embed an interactive chart in Google Docs. Docs has nowhere to paste embed code, so an iframe chart, the kind that works in Google Sites, Notion or a website builder, has no place to go. What Docs does offer is a chart linked to Google Sheets. It stays tied to its spreadsheet and refreshes when someone clicks Update, but readers see a static rendering: no tooltips, no zoom.

So the real answer is one of three setups, depending on whether the chart needs to be current, interactive or both: a linked Sheets chart, an image of the chart that links to a live version, or a different home for the document.

Option 1: a chart linked to Google Sheets

This is the only built-in route. In your document, choose Insert > Chart > From Sheets, pick the spreadsheet, pick the chart, leave "Link to spreadsheet" checked and click Import. (Insert > Chart and a chart type, such as Bar or Line, creates a new chart backed by a new Google Sheet instead.)

When the data changes, the chart in the document does not change by itself. An Update button appears at the top right of the chart. Tools > Linked objects opens a sidebar with Update all, which refreshes every linked chart and table in the document at once. If you don't see Update, Google's help page gives two reasons: the chart isn't linked, or it is already up to date.

The same help page lists three behaviors that matter if the document contains client or portfolio data.

Access travels with the document. Anyone who can view the doc can view its linked charts, even without access to the spreadsheet behind them. Sharing the document shares a picture of that data.

Updating overwrites. When you update a linked chart, the spreadsheet's version replaces any edits made to the chart inside the document.

Edits only flow one way. Changes you make to the chart inside the document are not copied back to the spreadsheet.

For a weekly note where the author refreshes everything before sending, this works well. For a document that readers open on their own schedule, the chart shows whatever it showed the last time someone clicked Update, and nothing on the page says when that was. Put an as-of date in the chart title in Sheets ("Fund vs benchmark, as of 23 Oct 2026") so the date travels with the chart. The same applies to a PDF downloaded from the doc: it carries the chart exactly as it stood at export.

Option 2: an image that links to a live chart

If readers need to interact with the chart, hover for values or change the range, the chart has to live on a web page and the document has to point to it.

Google Sheets can do this on its own. Click the chart, open its three-dot menu and choose Publish chart. You get a choice of a link or embed code for a website. From the same menu, Download as saves the chart as PNG, SVG or PDF. Insert the PNG into the document, select it, and add a link to the published chart.

Read Google's warnings before you publish. People can see the data used to create a published chart, and the published version updates automatically when the original changes, which can take a few minutes. On work and school accounts an administrator may have turned publishing off. For client portfolios or anything under an NDA, publishing a Sheets chart to the open web is the wrong move.

This is the same pattern that works where iframes are stripped entirely, in email and on Substack: a picture where the reader already is, and one click to the live version.

Option 3: give the document a home that takes embeds

If the chart has to be interactive inside the page itself, the page cannot be a Google Doc. Within Google's own tools, Google Sites accepts embed code (our Google Sites guide walks through it), while Google Slides takes linked Sheets charts the same way Docs does (PowerPoint and Google Slides). Outside Google, Notion and most website builders accept an iframe directly.

Which option to use

An internal memo that one person refreshes before it goes out: a linked Sheets chart, with the date in its title.

Client-facing research, a quarterly letter or an investor update that people read whenever they get to it: an image linked to a live chart, so the document never presents a stale number as current, and anyone who wants today's figure is one click away.

A dashboard people check every week: not a document at all. Use Google Sites or a web page that takes an embed.

Where Quadesto fits

Option 2 is where Quadesto helps when the chart is built from market or portfolio data rather than a Google Sheet. Build the chart in Quadesto, download it as a PNG for the doc, and link the image to the chart's shareable page, which you can edit and update after the document has gone out. Build your first chart free.