Excel Pie Chart Tutorial + Common Mistakes to Avoid

Your boss wants a pie chart. Data visualization "experts," say NOPE! So how do you decide?
In this video, I explain the pros & cons of pie charts and do 7 chart makeovers. This tutorial also covers several common mistakes to avoid. Learn how to tell better stories with your data and make your charts and dashboards easier to read.

📊Download the Excel file to follow along:

🔗LINKS

Related Content:

00:00 Introduction
00:38 What is a Pie Chart?
01:24 Two Types of Pie Charts
03:19 Too many slices
04:23 When Rank Matters
05:10 Panel Charts
05:37 Pie Vs Bar os Line Charts
06:02 Avoid the Legend
06:57 Too Many Colors & Labels
08:17 3D Exploding Pie Charts
09:29 Quiz Time

[ahmedla]

This is one of the best Excel guides I've seen so far: Your voice is calm, you're straight to the point, and your explanation doesn't take long to point out the piece of information you're trying to explain.
Thank you for being professional on this.

[juanbon]

Hi John, thank you for sharing your personal perspective on this topic. In my experience, another negative I have found, is the amount of space pie charts occupy. When working with dashboards, these charts tend to use too much screen space for the amount of information they provide. Usually, I limit their use only when displaying no more than two sets of information.

[mts]

This was such an amazing, informative tutorial. Thank you!

[randyhaimila]

As always, Jon has made it easy to understand and fun to learn. Thank you Jon

[cmcull]

Mini exam: I chose #10. The legend and % are inside each slice making it easier to understand. Also, I like the monochrome because it's less distracting.

[yvlove]

Thank you Jon! My boss loves pie charts and I always provide bar and column charts along with the pie charts as alternatives; i always include a reminder that pie charts are good for only 3-4 values at the most and when using more values, there's a good amount of manual work involved; it takes time to realign all the data labels when there is too much data or manually have to change the colors to make them stand out. I keep trying to get away from them, but I don't know if that will ever happen! But I did learn some tricks from this that might work for when I need to use them. Thanks for sharing this!

[harishnegi]

Wow...valuable tips...thanks a lot for sharing the video

[IvanCortinas_ES]

Excellent tutorial Jon. The sweet is very appetizing.
Be careful with sugar!!! Thank you for this complete information. :)

[cmcull]

Thank you Jon, an informative and very useful as always. This also helps how to better explain to a supervisor why one chart type is better in a given situation.

[teoxengineer]

Thank you Jon for good tutorial.
besides, I also want to add a good benefit to use pie chat for what in order to introduce speedometer illustruations. I'm using it by making some tricks and getting good results.

[zahoorsarbandi]

really very informative lecture. explanation is outstanding. Thank you for sharing ur knowledge

[nixneato]

Waiting for Halloween to talk about pie... We're onto you Jon :D

[eliassal]

Jon another great video. Can you please let me know how you or where in the meus those (+ -) that hide and show charts on workseets are done

[sidneypereira]

Tem como fazer um aulão dessas fórmulas abaixo ????


EXCEL FINANCEIRO:

-Função BDContar
-Função BDSoma
-Função BDExtrair
-Função Esquerda
-Função Direita
-Função Texto
-Função DiaTrabalho (WorkDay)
-Função DiaTrabalhoTotal (NetWorkDays)
-Função Dias360
-Função VP
-Função VF
-Função NPER
-Função TAXA

[rw]

Would you ever use an area chart to convey the information in pie charts over time (or some continuous variable)?