How Create a Pie Chart in Excel?

A pie chart is a circular chart which is a collection of multiple slices that joins together form a circular graph. In a pie chart, each slice represents an individual fragment of the whole pie chart and the complete pie chart represents 100% of the whole. Excel provides us with an easy way to create a pie chart.

In this section, we will discuss the method of creating a pie chart, we will also learn to customize pie chart, add a new category to the pie chart, format a pie chart and also the method of exploding the pie chart.

1. Create a Pie Chart
2. Customize Pie Chart
3. Add New Category
4. Format Chart
5. Exploding Pie Chart

Steps to Create a Pie Chart in Excel 2016:

Create a Pie Chart

Step 1: First of all, ‘select the data’ of which you have to create the pie chart.

Step 2: Under Insert tab, in Charts group click on Insert Pie Chart drop-down button.

You can find different types of Pie charts (2-D pie chart, 3-D pie chart & doughnut pie chart) among which you can select what kind of pie chart you want to create.

A pie chart will get created, if you click on the pie chart the data which is used to create that pie chat will get highlighted in the sheet.

Step 3: To change the chart title, just click on the chart title and start editing it.

Customize Pie Chart

Step 1: To the right side of the pie chart you have Chart Elements icon, it allows you to add elements like Chart Title, Data Labels & Legend to the pie chart.

You can also decide the location of the chart elements as you can see in the image below.

The following pie chart will give a clear view of chart elements i.e. chart title, data label and legend.

Step 2: Below the Chart Elements icon you have a Chart Style icon using which you can change your chart style and chart colour.

Step 3: Below the Chart Style icon you have a Chart Filters icon. Here, you can filter what values/category you want to add or remove from the pie chart.

Add New Category

Step 1: For adding a new category to your pie chart, add that new category just below the data of your pie chart. Now, click on the pie chart and it will highlight the data of pie chart. Drag the highlighted area to the newly added category, it will automatically add that category to your pie chart.

Note: Make sure the whole percentage including newly added category must be equal to 100%.

Or

Click on the Chart Filters icon, in the displayed menu click on Select Data…

A Select Data Source window will appear where you can edit the data range for your pie chart.

Format Chart

Step 1: Right-click on the pie chart and among the displayed option click on Format Chart Area…

Step 2: It will display a Format area on the right side of your screen. Now, in the pie chart click on the element that you want to format. Like, you can format the chart title, legends, series form pie chart or the entire pie chart.

Excel also provides Chart Tools to decorate your pie chart. You will get those tools under Design and Format tab.

Exploding Pie chart

The simplest way of exploding the pie chart is to click on the pie chart and all its slices will get selected. To explode the pie chart just drag all the slices in the opposite direction of the centre. To explode ‘single’ slice, select that specific slice and drag it in the opposite direction of the centre. You can also do it with Format Data Series.

You can explode the pie chart or a single slice of a pie chart in the Format Data Series section also.

So, that’s all about the steps to create and customize the pie chart in Excel. Hope the content is useful. Keep reading.