❺ Now manually select each of the data labels and then reposition them by dragging them away from the pie chart.Īfter dragging away all the data labels, you will see the data labels are connected with leader lines like the following screenshot. ❹ Now select Show Leader Lines in the Format Data Labels dialog box. ❸ From the context menu, choose Format Data Labels. ❶ Click on any one of the data labels to select. ❸ Now select Data Labels in the Chart Elements list.Īfter that, you will see a variety of data labels position option such as,
❷ Then click on the plus icon at the top-right corner of the pie chart. To enables the data labels on the pie chart, You need to enable the data labels manually. ❹ Now choose the 3-D Pie option (2-D Pie also can be used, if you prefer or need that).Īfter selecting the 3-D Piecommand, you will see the following pie chart has been generated.īy default, the pie chart will have no data labelsin it. ❸ From the Charts group, click on the Insert Pie or Doughnut Chartdrop-down menu. In the Country column, there is a list of oil exporting counties and in the Percentage column, their export quantity is in percentage.īefore adding labels to the pie chart, you need to generate a pie chart first. The dataset is a list of crude oil exports by country.
I will use the following dataset to show you how to add labels with lines in an Excel pie chart. Steps to Add Labels with Lines in an Excel Pie Chart For example, a pie chart could be used to show the different flavors of ice cream that are sold in a store. Pie charts are useful for displaying data that are classified into nominal or ordinal categories. Each portion’s area is equal to the quantity it stands for. After all, that is why Peltier is on his roof.A Pie Chart is a circular graph that is divided into sectors that each represent a proportion of the whole. I can promise you that in most situations using an alternative is better and easier than you thought. How can a Pie chart help my audience understand my point?.What is it that I am trying to tell here?.Next time you set out to make a pie chart, I suggest you to spend a minute and think about, I think we make pie charts because they are safe. Pie chart is not the devil, a pie chart that fails to tell the story is. We have successfully converted a gazillion sliced pie chart to something meaningful and simple. You can speed up this step by setting first slice’s fill color to none and then using F4 key to repeat the last action (ie setting color to none) on other slices. Individually select each slice in the second pie and set the fill color to “none”. Format the Second Pie so that it is Invisible
Select “Split series by” and set it to “percentage”. (In excel 2003, you have to go to “options” tab in format dialog to change this). We will ask excel to split the pies by Percentage. In the resulting dialog, you can change the way excel splits 2 pies. Click on any slice and go to “format series”Ĭlick on any slice and hit CTRL+1 or right click and select format option. Select “Pie of Pie” chart, the one that looks like this:Īt this point the chart should look something like this:Ģ. Just select your data and go to Insert > Chart. Select Your Data Create a Pie of Pie Chart Interested? Then just follow these steps.
The beauty of this trick is, it is completely automatic and all you have to do is formatting. We will take the pie chart on left and convert it to the one on right. Today I want to teach you a simple pie chart hack that can improve readability of the chart while retaining most of the critical information intact. In fact I will go ahead and say that pie charts are actually the most widely used charts in business contexts. Jon Peltier can stand on his roof and shout in to a megaphone “ Use Bar Charts, Not Pies“, but the fact remains that most of us use pie charts sometime or other.