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About this lesson

Learn how to build an effective pie chart, and when you should and shouldn’t use them.

Lesson versions

Multiple versions of this lesson are available, choose the appropriate version for you:

2010, 2013, 2016, 2019/365.

Exercise files

Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ Excel workbooks from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.

Building Pie Charts - 2013.xlsx
9.8 KB Building Pie Charts - 2013 - Completed.xlsx
14.4 KB Building Pie Charts - Extra Practice.xlsx
19.9 KB

Quick reference

Topic

How to build an effective pie chart, and when you shouldn’t use them.

When to use

When you need to convey a simple percentage value or a maximum of 3 data series that need to be displayed as a proportion. (If there are more than 3 data series, reach to a bar or column chart instead.)

Instructions

Before you start, be aware

  • Your brain is not good at working with angles or areas
  • If you have more than 3 data series, move to a different chart style (bar or column)

Creating a Pie Chart

  • Select A7:B8
  • Go to Insert > Recommended Charts and select the pie chart

Adding context

  • Select the chart title, press the equals key, click on A4 and press Enter
  • Click on the pie chart
  • Right click and choose Add Data Labels
  • Right click the Data Labels and choose Format Data Labels
  • Select Percentage and clear the Values
  • Set the label position to Center

Reducing ink

  • Click the largest area of the pie twice (slowly, not a double click) to select the series
  • Change the Outline to a dark green from the mini-toolbar
  • Click the smallest area of the pie twice (slowly, not a double click) to select the series
  • Change the Outline to a dark red from the mini-toolbar
  • Select a worksheet cell, then right click the entire pie
  • Set the fill to “No Fill”
  • Right click the smallest point on the pie and choose “Format Data Point”
  • Set the Point Explosion to 10%
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  • 00:03 Before we talk about how to actually build a pie chart
  • 00:07 we should talk about when they should be used and when they really shouldn't be used
  • 00:12 more to the point when they shouldn't be used.
  • 00:14 A lot of people reach to pie charts as the first type of chart they ever throw into a project.
  • 00:18 Managers ask for them my name, it's really popular, people just love them.
  • 00:22 And yet pie charts are actually a terrible way for conveying information.
  • 00:27 Our brains are really bad at interpreting angles and areas to try and figure out what proportions are.
  • 00:33 It is actually much easier for us to look at a line chart, a bar chart or a column chart
  • 00:38 and say that line is longer than another one and this is by how much.
  • 00:42 Once we start adding areas to it and angles it gets really difficult.
  • 00:45 You only need to try and teach a child how to read an analog clock versus a digital clock to see that that's true.
  • 00:51 By rule of thumb never try and plot more than three series on a pie chart
  • 00:57 and even when you do that, you want to go and actually add indicators to it to show what the numbers are
  • 01:02 so that people can get the information they want out.
  • 01:05 One area where I do use pie charts on occasion is to go and show a percent complete.
  • 01:11 So something that only has two series; that can actually work quite well.
  • 01:15 Let's get to actually building one of those now.
  • 01:18 The first thing we need to do is select our data so we'll select from A7:B8
  • 01:24 then we'll go to the Insert tab
  • 01:26 and we'll click on Recommended Charts.
  • 01:30 Now you'll notice right away that Excel 2013 gives us recommended charts
  • 01:33 and that a pie chart is not the first choice. But we're going to go and
  • 01:37 skip over that anyway. Choose the pie chart and say OK.
  • 01:41 Now the first thing we need to do is give our chart a little bit more context. We can do that by changing the title. So click on Chart Title
  • 01:48 press equals and then we'll select cell A4 and hit Enter. What that'll do is it'll actually link the title to the content
  • 01:57 in cell A4. So that's perfect, now we know that any time we update A4 it's going to show up in the title here which is great.
  • 02:04 The pie chart itself is not too horrendous looking as it is but it definitely could have some things to add some value for us. So we'll go and right
  • 02:11 click on the pie and we'll go click Add Data Labels. What you'll see is
  • 02:16 that we'll actually get some values that show up inside there, the values from our list.
  • 02:20 Let's go and change those. We'll select the data labels right click and say
  • 02:26 Format Data Labels
  • 02:28 and that'll pull up a task pane on the right hand side. Over here we can click on Percentage,
  • 02:34 uncheck the Value, that tells us the percentage complete
  • 02:38 and we'll choose it to put it in the Center
  • 02:40 of the actual pie wedges. And that's good.
  • 02:43 Now, one of the things I find about pie charts is that the color saturations are so dense
  • 02:47 that when you have one on a report it just pops off the page
  • 02:50 and that's the first thing that the eye goes to.
  • 02:53 Now I prefer to actually remove a lot of the color from my chart so they can fade into the background when I'm not really wanting to
  • 02:59 pay attention but the information is actually there if I do need it. In the case of a
  • 03:03 progress indicator that's more appropriate than having something that's just screaming what's going on.
  • 03:08 So to do that what we're going to do is we're going to select the pie. You'll notice that the
  • 03:13 tab changes over here for our, in our task pane. So we go to fill,
  • 03:17 we'll go to Border and select the border as a Solid Line
  • 03:22 and I'm going to make this one a nice dark green colour.
  • 03:25 Then I'm going to go and change the Fill to No fill and that removes the colour from the chart.
  • 03:33 Next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to click on this specific slice here and you'll notice that my legend has now changed to Format Data Point.
  • 03:40 This time I'm going to select a Solid Line but I'm going to change this one
  • 03:45 to a nice dark red colour. You can see that changed it for just that series because I selected it.
  • 03:51 The last thing that I'd like to do with this particular Data Point is I'm going to go back to the Series Options
  • 03:57 and I'm going to change the Point Explosion to 10% just to make it pop out a tiny little bit from the chart.
  • 04:04 The very last thing I'll do with my pie chart now
  • 04:07 is I'll select it and I will actually go and shrink the border down a little bit.
  • 04:11 So that moves the data into a place that it looks a little bit better.
  • 04:15 I can now put that in the upper right or upper left hand corner of my,
  • 04:19 of my report and it adds a little bit of progress information
  • 04:23 without totally overwhelming the report.
  • 04:25 So that makes a nice, effective pie chart.

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