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. In fact I will go ahead and say that pie charts are actually the most widely used charts in business contexts.
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.
We will take the pie chart on left and convert it to the one on right. The beauty of this trick is, it is completely automatic and all you have to do is formatting.
Interested? Then just follow these steps. [more examples and commentary on pie charts]
1. Select Your Data Create a Pie of Pie Chart
Just select your data and go to Insert > Chart. Select “Pie of Pie” chart, the one that looks like this:
At this point the chart should look something like this:
2. Click on any slice and go to “format series”
Click on any slice and hit CTRL+1 or right click and select format option. In the resulting dialog, you can change the way excel splits 2 pies. We will ask excel to split the pies by Percentage. (In excel 2003, you have to go to “options” tab in format dialog to change this).
Select “Split series by” and set it to “percentage”. Specify the percentage value like 10%.
3. Format the Second Pie so that it is Invisible
Individually select each slice in the second pie and set the fill color to “none”. 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.
That is all. We have successfully converted a gazillion sliced pie chart to something meaningful and simple.
Additional commentary on Pie charts
Pie chart is not the devil, a pie chart that fails to tell the story is. I think we make pie charts because they are safe. Next time you set out to make a pie chart, I suggest you to spend a minute and think about,
- What is it that I am trying to tell here?
- How can a Pie chart help my audience understand my point?
- Can I use an alternative to pie chart?
I can promise you that in most situations using an alternative is better and easier than you thought. After all, that is why Peltier is on his roof.
30 Responses to “Great News: Chandoo becomes MVP”
Congratulations! It's well deserved. 🙂
This is amazing. Hearty congratulations and a rocking new year ahead!!!
Congrats! I have learnt alot from your site... and the most important is learning how to achieve the most with the simplest concepts.
Thanks for the excel calendar. Is it possible to get a simple big fonted calendar printable on an A4 size paper without any distracive notes or visuals? BTW, I have already signed up for your newsletter. With warm regards and
Gratefully yours
50+ year old CHarish.
Hey Chandoo,
Great to hear that. Congratulations! The best new year gift, I would say. Keep it up, u've been doing extraordinary work for the excel users community.
Regards,
Pankaj Verma
Congrats dude... fantastic news!
congratulations! your site is great, this is well deserved
Rich
I recently found your site, I visit many. The tips that you provide are in the top 1% of all the sites I visit. Keep on Excelling.
Arnold
South Africa
Congratulations, Chandoo! That's a great way to start the year and make the PHD even better.
Congratulations, Chandoo.
Your site is one of most useful on the net. Happy new year and lot of ideas you will present for us.
Congrats.
Just read your name in an email from Abhishek. Well deserved.
Congratulations, and Happy New Year.
Greetings from Rio de Janeiro my friend! You trully deserve it!
Nive way to start 2009! Keep up the good work!
FC
That was quite forseeable , so you have now really got your PhD in excel.
Anyways Chandoo you have made excel a real Fun doo
I will like you to write some more on INDEX and MATCH function in near future.
@Hey Chandoo ! Congrates....
Ab to treat mangta hai !
Well deserved Chandoo!!
Congrat's!! Very well deserved 🙂
i always browsed mr.excel and used to see MVP writtne below names of people who used to solve queries in excel forum there......i just used to admire as to what they have special in them that they are MVP......
but now i got my answer...............u deserve it man..........
@All: thanks everyone 🙂
Congratulations Chandoo, nice job!
Chandoo,
A well deserved recognition and a good start to the New Year. Continue your good work.
Subbu
Many Congratulations.
You deserve a Ph.D. 🙂
congrats.....
Congrats dude. Rock on!
[...] charting community in 2007 and has been growing strongly ever since. In year 2009, I have received the MVP award from Microsoft. Just few days back I have become a dad [...]
Respected sir,
I am impressed!.... Good job done.. Keep it up...
Sir, How to be a MVP certified person. What level of knowledge is required for it? send me links if possible.
Please reply...
Regards,
Dipak Khalasi.
Dipak -
The first thing you need to cultivate is the ability to search the web effectively. You could start by Googling "Microsoft MVP".
[...] boy and girl which has been made hectic and incredibly fun ever since to their life.He has been awarded MVP status in 2009 by Microsoft(and renewed in 2010,2011 & 2012).His MVP profile is here.If you want to contact him direct then [...]
Congrats Chandoo!!
[…] Chandoo becomes MVP […]