How to Create a Donut Chart in Google Sheets with ChatGPT

Making a donut chart in Google Sheets is a fantastic way to show how individual parts make up a whole, but getting your data organized and building the chart can feel a bit clunky. Using ChatGPT can speed up the tedious parts of this process, from generating sample data to helping you analyze the final chart. This tutorial will walk you through exactly how to combine the power of ChatGPT with the simplicity of Google Sheets to create beautiful and insightful donut charts.

What is a Donut Chart and When Should You Use It?

A donut chart is essentially a pie chart with the center cut out. That hole in the middle isn't just for looks, it provides a clean space to display a key metric, like a total value or an overall percentage, giving the chart more context at a glance.

Just like its pie-chart cousin, the donut chart excels at showing "part-to-whole" relationships. It's the perfect choice when you want to visualize a breakdown of a single total. Think about visualizing:

• Marketing Budget: How spend is allocated across different channels (e.g., Social Media, SEO, Events).

• Website Traffic: The sources that drive visitors to your site (e.g., Organic Search, Direct, Referral).

• Sales by Product Category: Which categories contribute the most to your total revenue.

• Survey Responses: The proportion of respondents who chose each specific answer.

A good rule of thumb is to use a donut chart when you have between two and five categories. Any more than that, and the slices can become too small to read, making the chart cluttered and hard to understand. In those cases, a bar chart is usually a better option.

Step 1: Use ChatGPT to Prepare and Structure Your Data

Before you can build a chart, you need clean data. A donut chart requires two simple columns: one for the category labels and one for their corresponding numerical values. This is where ChatGPT can save you a ton of time, whether you're brainstorming a new report or creating mock data for a presentation.

Generating Chart-Ready Data with a Prompt

Instead of manually typing out your data, you can ask ChatGPT to create it for you in a format that's ready to be pasted directly into Google Sheets. The key is to be clear and specific in your prompt.

Let's say you're building a report to show your quarterly marketing budget breakdown. Here’s a prompt you could use:

"I need to create a donut chart in Google Sheets to visualize our quarterly marketing budget of $50,000.

Can you generate sample data for me? The spending categories are Paid Social, Content Creation, SEO, and Email Marketing.

Please format this as a simple, two-column table that I can easily copy and paste."

Within seconds, ChatGPT will produce something like this:

Now, simply highlight the table directly from the ChatGPT interface, copy it (Ctrl+C or Cmd+C), and paste it into a blank Google Sheet (Ctrl+V or Cmd+V). The data will appear perfectly formatted, with "Category" in cell A1 and "Spend" in cell B1.

Step 2: Create the Donut Chart in Google Sheets

With your data neatly organized, creating the chart itself takes less than a minute. Google Sheets' Chart Editor makes this process incredibly straightforward.

From Data to Visualization in Four Clicks

Follow these quick steps to generate your initial chart:

1. Select Your Data: Click and drag your mouse to highlight the cells containing your data, including the headers (e.g., cells A1 through B5).

2. Insert the Chart: Navigate to the top menu and click Insert > Chart.

3. Open the Chart Editor: Google Sheets will automatically create a chart and open the Chart editor pane on the right side of your screen. It will often default to a pie chart or bar chart.

4. Choose Donut Chart: In the Chart editor, under the Setup tab, click the dropdown menu under "Chart type". Scroll down to the "Pie" section and select the Donut chart option.

And that's it! You now have a basic donut chart visualizing your data. But the real magic comes from customizing it to make your story clear and compelling.

Step 3: Customize Your Donut Chart for Maximum Impact

A default chart gets the point across, but a well-customized chart tells a story and aligns with your brand. The Customize tab in the Chart editor is your control panel for making your chart shine.

Key Customization Options You Should Know

• Chart Style: Here you can change the background color, the font for all the text, and even add a border. You can also make the chart 3D, but be careful with this — 2D charts are generally easier to read accurately.

• Donut: This section lets you adjust the "Donut hole" size, from a thin ring (10%) to a much wider one (90%). A hole size between 25% and 50% usually works well. You can also add a color to the border separating the slices to improve readability.

• Slice Labels: This is one of the most important settings for clarity. By default, your chart might not show any labels on the slices. Use the dropdown here to add the percentage, the value, the category label, or a combination. Displaying the percentage is almost always a good idea.

• Chart & Axis Titles: Give your chart a clear, descriptive title. Don't just call it "Marketing spend." A better title is "Q3 Marketing Spend Allocation." This provides instant context to anyone viewing the report.

• Legend: The legend helps viewers connect colors to categories. You can change its position (top, bottom, right, etc.) or change the font and colors. Placing it to the right or bottom often works best.

• Series (Colors): Don't settle for the default colors! Click on this section to change the color of each individual slice. This allows you to match your company's brand colors, use shades of a single color for a monochromatic look, or use a bold color to highlight the most important category.

Bonus: Advanced Tips Using ChatGPT

Your partnership with ChatGPT doesn't have to end once the data is generated. You can use it as a data analysis assistant to refine your report even further.

Get Help with Titles and Insights

Not sure what to title your chart or what the main takeaway is? Paste your data back into ChatGPT and ask for its perspective.

"Based on this data:Paid Social: $20,000Content Creation: $15,000SEO: $10,000Email Marketing: $5,000

What would be a clear title for a donut chart, and what is the single most important insight a manager should see?"

ChatGPT might respond with title suggestions like "Paid Social Dominates Q3 Marketing Spend (40%)" and an insight like "The key takeaway is that Paid Social represents the largest portion of the budget at 40%, receiving twice the investment of SEO."

Brainstorming Design Ideas

If you're stuck on design, you can even ask ChatGPT for inspiration.

"I'm creating a donut chart for a corporate presentation. Can you give me a professional color palette with 4 hex codes I can use in Google Sheets?"

It will give you a list of HEX codes that you can easily plug into the color customizer in Google Sheets, ensuring your chart looks polished and professional.

Final Thoughts

Creating a donut chart in Google Sheets is a simple yet powerful way to visualize your data, and using ChatGPT as an assistant can dramatically speed up the process, from generating data to finding insights. Follow this guide, and you'll be able to quickly build clear, custom-branded charts that effectively communicate your story.

While this method is excellent for single reports, constantly copying and pasting data to update your charts can become a chore, especially when your data sources change frequently. At Graphed, we created a solution that eliminates this manual work entirely. Instead of wrestling with spreadsheets, you can connect your data sources (like Google Ads, Shopify, or HubSpot) directly and simply ask, "Show me a donut chart of my marketing spend by channel for this quarter." We instantly build a live, interactive dashboard that updates automatically, so you can spend less time building reports and more time acting on the insights.