A pie chart is a useful way to track and summarize your information in a graphical form. If you’d like to know how to create a Pie chart in Excel 2010, follow the steps below.
The Data-set used to Create a Pie Chart in Excel 2010
In order to create a Pie chart in Excel 2010, you’ll need a data-set that will be displayed in your pie chart.
For example, suppose you are running a project and you would like to track the status of your tasks.
In that case, you may wish to track your tasks across the following 3 categories:
(1) Tasks Pending
(2) Tasks Ongoing
(3) Tasks Completed
Now, you’ll need the number of tasks associated with each of the 3 categories. Here, I chose the following numbers for each of the 3 categories:
| Tasks Pending | 300 |
| Tasks Ongoing | 500 |
| Tasks Completed | 700 |
Steps to Create a Pie Chart in Excel 2010
Here are the steps you can follow in order to create your Pie chart:
(1) First, you’ll need to copy (or type) the above table into Excel. Your table should look like this in Excel:
(2) Go to the ‘Insert’ tab:
(3) Now you’ll need to select the range of cells that will be used in the Pie chart. In our example, I selected the range of cells C4:D6
(4) Press the ‘Pie’ Icon and then select the ‘3-D Pie’ chart type.
I personally like to use the 3-D Pie charts, but feel free to choose another Pie chart type, such as 2-D Pie chart…
(5) Congratulation, you just created a Pie chart. Your Pie chart should look like this:
(6) If you’d like to change the chart layout, choose your desired layout from the Chart Layouts section.
Here, I chose the second chart layout. This layout will display the percentages associated with each of our 3 categories:
(7) Additionally, the second chart layout allows you to type a chart tittle. Here, I typed the title ‘Tasks Status’
(8) To change the colors of your Pie chart, you can simply select among the options under the Chart Styles section.
For illustration, I chose a green color scheme:
If you’d like to create other types of charts, such as a column chart, please visit our post that shows a step-by-step guide on How to Create a Column Chart in MS Excel 2010