How to Create a Pie Chart in Excel
Follow these instructions to make a pie chart in Excel.
Excel Instruction
Pie Chart
- 1.
- Collect the data you want to make a pie chart from, and compose a frequency table.
- 2.
- Highlight the cells making up the entire table, and choose the chart type
Pie chart. - 3.
- Add chart elements and make changes so your chart appears informative and clear. Remember to give your chart a title!
Example 1
Greendale Business school is an international school with students from all over the world. Make a pie chart of the different nationalities represented at the school.
- 1.
- First, you need to determine the number of students that represent each country, and use the data to make a frequency table:
- 2.
- Highlight the table and choose
Insertfrom the top menu bar inExcel. Then select pie chart from theRecommended Chartsmenu. If an appropriate pie chart doesn’t appear, choose from thePie Chartmenu, next to theRecommended Chartsmenu. - 3.
- Now that you have chosen a pie chart, you can add various chart elements to refine the chart as you wish. In the picture above you can see that the title is “Nationalities”. This is an okay title, but it would be even better if you change the title to “Nationalities Represented at Greendale Business School, 2021”. That title explains more clearly what the chart represents.
Another thing you can change is the colors of each section (or slice) of the pie chart. You could use colors from each country’s flag, or just change the colors to more distinctive colors that go well together (you can use a color palette for this).
One way to do this is to double click the pie chart. This will make a menu appear, as shown below. You can then choose a fitting color for each section.
The chart is looking pretty good now!
Excelgives you a lot of opportunities to style the chart just the way you want.Eventually you can add data labels for each section. Then, each section will show how many students represent each country.
The final chart should look like this:
