How to make a pie chart with categorical data excel

Graphical representation for categorical data in which a circle is partitioned into “slices” on the basis of the proportions of each category.

Pie Chart of Diagnosis

Category

Depression (48.5%)
Anxiety (34.9%)
OCD (6.5%)
Abuse (10.1%)

Excel pie charts are useful to display fractions of a whole by splitting a circle into sections. Each section looks like a slice of a pie and represents a category. Such a layout makes it easy to observe relationships between parts, but the smaller becomes the slice (less than 10%) – the harder becomes to estimate it visually.

For example, if you have several companies that operate on the market, you can represent a part of every company on the market as a slice.

This data contains five slices that fall below 10%.

To make smaller slices more visible in a pie chart, Microsoft Excel provides the Pie of Pie (see above), and Bar of Pie (see below) chart sub-types.

Each of these chart sub-types separates the smaller slices from the main pie chart and displays them in a supplementary pie or stacked bar chart. To create a Pie of Pie or Bar of Pie chart, follow these steps:

1. Select the data range (in this example, B5:C14).

2. On the Insert tab, in the Charts group, choose the Pie and Doughnut button:

Choose Pie of Pie

or Bar of Pie

3. Right-click in the chart area. In the popup menu, select Format Data Series...

4. On the Format Data Series pane, in the Series Options tab, select which data to display in the second pie (in this example, the second pie shows all values less than 10%):

There are several ways to choose which categories (slices) to display in the secondary pie or bar chart:

Split series by Position (enter the number of positions moved to the secondary chart)
Split series by Value (the values less than the specified moved to the secondary chart)
Split series by Percentage Value (the values less than the specified percentage moved to the secondary chart)
Split series by Custom (drag and drop categories between to charts)

You can then make any other adjustments to get the look you desire:

Pie Explosion detaches the slice from the primary chart and moves it closer to the secondary chart
Gap Width controls the distance between charts
Second Plot Size specifies the relative size of the second chart.

See also this tip in French: Un graphique en Secteurs de secteur ou Barres de secteur.

Can pie charts be used for categorical data?

Pie charts are used for nominal or categorical data. When there are many levels to your variable, a bar chart or packed bar chart may provide a better visualization of your data.

How do you show categorical data in Excel?

As categorical data may not include numbers, it can be difficult to figure how to visualize this type of data, however, in Excel, this can be easily done with the aid of pivot tables and pivot charts. First, click on any cell within the data set. Then press Atl +N+V. This will open the Create Pivot Table dialogue box.