While I have the data labels selected, I’m going to move to the top of the page and change the font, font size, and data label color. I’m also going to unclick the “Value” box and click on the “Percentage” box. In the same Format Data Labels menu as the previous step, just click on the Category Name box. I also want to add the category name to the label. Adding the Category Name to the Data Label Just right click on the label and select “Format Data Labels” to bring up the menu. I don’t like Excel’s “Best Fit” so I’m going to change the label position. You do this by right clicking on the pie chart and selecting “Add Data Labels” from the menu. So I’m going to delete that (click on the legend and press the delete button) and then directly label the pie chart portions. I’ll just pretend my data is real and not fake. Lots of pie charts are created using percentages that add up to 100. So in addition to just a column of numbers it’s a good idea to have row labels and column headers. Here are some more steps you probably want to take to create something worth sharing. Okay, so that’s the most basic of basics.
Woohoo, you created a pie chart! How to create a good looking pie chart. *If you have any instinct to click the 3-D Pie button, resist that instinct. Click on the insert tab, then the pie chart icon. It just takes a column of data and a couple of buttons.
Check out " How to create a bar chart in Displayr".This is the fourth in a series of posts on chart design in Excel. Ready to move beyond Excel? There are other ways to create visualizations that offer more advanced options and flexibility. Again, you can modify the chart design and formatting using the Chart Tools menu as described above. Next, in the Horizontal (Category) Axis Labels section, click the Edit button and for Axis label range select the values in cells A1:A6. But whatever is entered here will be used to populate the chart title. You can leave the Series name field blank. Under Legend Entries (Series) click Add. Then for Series values, select the values in cells B1:B6 and click OK. Note that the chart object must be selected for the Chart Tools menu to appear. This opens the Select Data Source dialogue box. Next, select Chart Tools > Design > Select Data (Data group). This will create an empty pie chart object on the sheet. To do this, first select the pie chart from the Insert > Charts menu to select one of the pie chart options. In Excel, you also have an option to create the chart object first and then provide the data to populate the chart. In the example above, we started with the data and turned this into our chart. I've modified the chart title, color scheme and chart style below.
From here you can modify the design and format properties of the chart.
Modify the pie chart properties by first selecting the pie chart and then going to the Chart option that appears at the top of the menu tool bar. For this example I've selected the 3-D Pie option on the second row.Ī pie chart object is created on the sheet. To create a chart from the data, highlight the data range (cells A1:B6 in this case) and select Insert > Charts (group) and select the Pie Chart option. Since there are 30 teams in the NBA, we'll focus on those that have won a minimum of 5 championships and group the others into an "Other" category. Make sure that your first column contains the labels and your second, the values. For this example, we're going to create a pie chart based on the number of NBA Championships won by each team. The most common approach for creating a a pie chart in Excel is to first setup your data in a basic table. Getting your data ready for your pie chart In this article, we'll look at how to create a basic pie using Excel. Creating a pie chart is extremely easy using Microsoft Excel.