how to create a pie chart showing percentages in excel

It might lack the finer details that other chart types can offer, but it’s excellent for gaining a quick insight at the first glance.įor that reason, pie charts are ubiquitous in the world of business intelligence, as proven by the fact that Drill Down Pie PRO is one of our most downloaded custom visuals for Microsoft Power BI. However, if you’re using percentage-based data and need to show the part-to-whole relationship of each category, pie charts are truly peerless in their simplicity and ease-of-use. Pie charts are not always the best choice for data visualization, and you should consider whether they’re suited for the kind of data you want to display. Of course, not all pie charts that you see are used correctly.

The first known pie chart was made by William Playfair in 1801, and more than two hundred years later, this visualization type is still widely used everywhere, be it research, journalism, marketing or BI.

It’s one of the default data visualizations in Excel, which, coupled with its simplicity, makes the pie chart one of the most popular ways to show data.

Do you remember your first school research project? You had to find a way to visualize your findings, and pie charts were the obvious go-to chart for all things percentage.

How to create a pie chart showing percentages in excel