Pie Charts

Pie Charts

Working with Pie and Donut charts in Power BI

When to use

Pie and Donut charts can be used to show the proportion of one value vs the whole

Instructions

Pie Charts and donut charts are very similar, with the latter essentially just being a Pie chart with a hole in the middle.

Layout

• Drag your descriptive Field into the Legend area.  The unique items in this field will make up each slice
• The measure to indicate the proportion of the slices should be dropped into the Values area
• The Details field allows further subdividing the pie into smaller slices color-coded to the Legend.  Use this field with caution as it tends to create too many data points

Formatting

• Dragging multiple fields into the Legend area will activate Drill Down
• Dragging multiple fields into the Details area will subdivide the pie slices
• Visual formatting can be done for the Formatting icon in the Visualizations pane

Hints & tips

• Try to avoid using pie charts for more than three series of data, as they are too hard to read

Common Modifications for Pie Charts

• Provide a custom title for the chart
• Modifying the Data colors
• Replacing them with bar or column charts