How to Make a Pie Chart in Excel with AI

Creating a pie chart in Excel used to be a fussy, multi-click process. But now, Excel's built-in AI tools can do most of the heavy lifting for you, turning your raw data into a clean visualization in seconds. This guide will walk you through exactly how to use these smart features to create, customize, and share professional-looking pie charts.

What Exactly is a Pie Chart and When Should You Use One?

Before jumping into the "how," it's helpful to understand the "what" and "why." A pie chart is a circular graph that displays data in slices, where each slice represents a category's proportion of a whole. Think of it like a pizza: the entire pizza is 100% of your data, and each slice is a percentage of that total.

Pie charts are fantastic for one specific job: showing parts-of-a-whole relationships. They answer the question, "How much does each category contribute to the total?"

Use a pie chart when:

• You have a single data series you want to visualize.

• None of your data values are negative.

• You have fewer than seven categories. Any more, and the chart becomes cluttered and hard to read.

• The categories are distinct and their sum equals a meaningful total (e.g., 100% of a marketing budget, total website traffic, or all sales).

When should you avoid a pie chart?

• When you need to compare categories to each other: Bar charts are much better for showing precise differences between values. It’s hard for the human eye to accurately compare the size of angled slices.

• When you have many categories: A pie chart with 10 or 15 tiny slices is messy and uninformative. A bar chart would be cleaner.

• When you want to show changes over time: A line chart is the standard and most effective way to display trends.

Step 1: Get Your Data Ready for AI

Excel's AI is smart, but it's not a mind reader. It needs clean, properly structured data to work correctly. Don't worry, this is simple. All you need is a basic two-column table.

One column should contain your categories (the labels for your slices), and the adjacent column should contain the corresponding numerical values (the size of each slice).

Let's use a common marketing example: analyzing website traffic sources for the last month. Your data should look like this:

A few key things to remember:

• Use headers: Label your columns clearly (e.g., "Channel" and "Sessions"). This helps the AI understand what your data represents.

• Keep it simple: Avoid merged cells, blank rows, or extra subtotals within your data range. Just a straightforward block of data is all you need.

• Format as a Table (Optional but Recommended): Click anywhere in your data and press Ctrl + T (or Cmd + T on Mac) to format it as an official Excel Table. This makes it easier for Excel to manage and analyze your data range.

Step 2: Generate a Pie Chart Using "Recommended Charts"

"Recommended Charts" is Excel's original smart feature. It analyzes your selected data and suggests several chart types it thinks would be a good fit. It’s a fast, guided way to get started.

1. Select Your Data: Click and drag to highlight the entire data table, including the headers.

2. Navigate to the Insert Tab: In the Excel ribbon at the top, click on the "Insert" tab.

3. Click "Recommended Charts": You'll find this option in the "Charts" section. A dialog box will appear.

4. Choose the Pie Chart: Excel will show you a few options on the left. If it identifies that your data represents parts of a whole, a pie chart will be one of the top suggestions. Click on it to see a preview.

5. Insert the Chart: If you're happy with the preview, click "OK." Excel will create the pie chart and place it on your worksheet.

This method works great for quickly creating a standard chart, but for more advanced, conversational analysis, the next method is even more powerful.

Step 3: Create a Pie Chart with Natural Language using "Analyze Data"

Now we get to the really impressive AI. Excel's "Analyze Data" tool (formerly called "Ideas") lets you bypass the menus entirely and simply ask Excel for the chart you want. You can type a question in plain English, and the AI will generate the visualization for you.

This is the fastest path from data to insight.

1. Select Your Data: Just like before, highlight your data range or just click on any single cell inside your formatted Excel Table.

2. Find "Analyze Data": Navigate to the "Home" tab on the Excel ribbon. On the far right, you'll see a button called "Analyze Data."

3. Open the Analyze Data Pane: Clicking this button will open a panel on the right side of your screen. Excel will automatically analyze your data and propose several interesting insights and charts without you having to do anything else. It might show a bar chart of your traffic and might even offer the pie chart right away!

Asking a Question in the Prompt Box

The real magic happens in the text box at the top of the "Analyze Data" pane. You can type a command or question about your data here.

Click into the text box that says "Ask a question about your data..." and type:

Show total Sessions by Channel as a pie chart

Press Enter. The AI will process your request and instantly generate a preview of the exact pie chart you asked for, right there in the panel.

It understands "total sessions," refers to the headers, identifies "channel," and knows what a "pie chart" is. You don't need to know formulas or complex chart settings.

Other questions you could ask for this dataset include:

• "What is the percentage of sessions from Organic Search?"

• "Pie chart for sessions by channel"

• "Which channel brings the most sessions?" (This will likely yield a bar chart, but from there you can format it as a pie chart.)

1. Insert Your Chart: Below the generated chart preview, you'll see a button that says "+ Insert Chart." Click it, and the AI-generated pie chart will be added to your spreadsheet, ready for customization.

Step 4: Make Your AI-Generated Pie Chart Great

The AI gets you 90% of the way there, but a little bit of polish makes your chart look more professional and easier to understand. Once you've inserted it, you can customize everything.

When you click on your chart, two new tabs will appear in the ribbon: "Chart Design" and "Format."

Essential Customizations:

• Give it a Clear Title: Double-click the default chart title and replace it with something descriptive, like "Website Traffic by Source - May 2024."

• Add Data Labels: Go to the "Chart Design" tab > "Add Chart Element" > "Data Labels." Choose "Outside End" to place the values next to their slices. To show percentages instead of raw numbers, select "More Data Label Options..." and in the panel that opens, check "Percentage" and uncheck "Value."

• Change Colors and Style: In the "Chart Design" tab, you can use the "Change Colors" dropdown to apply a new color palette or select one of the pre-made "Chart Styles" to quickly change its overall look and feel.

• Emphasize a Slice: To draw attention to a specific category (like "Organic Search"), you can "explode" its slice. Click once on the pie to select it, then click a second time on just the slice you want to highlight. Now, click and drag that slice slightly away from the center of the pie.

Best Practices for Pie Charts That Don't Confuse People

A poorly designed pie chart can hurt understanding more than it helps. Stick to these simple rules:

• Keep Slices to a Minimum: If you have more than 5-7 categories, group the smallest ones into a single "Other" slice or switch to a bar chart.

• Order Slices Logically: Arrange the slices from largest to smallest, starting at the 12 o'clock position and moving clockwise. This makes the chart easier to scan. Excel often does this by default.

• Avoid 3D Effects: It's tempting, but 3D pie charts distort the proportions of the slices. A slice in the foreground will look larger than an identically sized slice in the background, which is misleading. Stick to a simple, 2D view.

• Always Add Up to 100%: Double-check that all your parts actually represent a complete whole. A pie chart showing sales from "some" of your product categories is not a faithful representation.

Final Thoughts

Making a pie chart in Excel is easier than ever. Using AI-powered tools like "Recommended Charts" and especially "Analyze Data" transforms the process from a manual task of clicks and menus to a simple conversation with your spreadsheet. A quick natural language prompt is all it takes to get an accurate, useful visualization, giving you more time to focus on what the data actually means.

While Excel is fantastic for data you already have in a spreadsheet, the real reporting challenge is often gathering and combining information from all the different tools you use, like your advertising platforms, CRM, and e-commerce store. That’s a headache of downloading CSVs and endlessly copying-pasting we know all too well. To solve that, we built Graphed. It connects to your marketing and sales tools (think Google Analytics, Shopify, Facebook Ads, Salesforce) and automates the entire process, letting you build live dashboards with the same kind of simple, natural language questions - no spreadsheets required.