How to Make a Pie Chart in Power BI

Creating a pie chart in Power BI is an essential skill for visualizing how different parts contribute to a whole. This guide will walk you through the entire process, from getting your data ready to customizing your chart for a professional look and feel.

What Is a Pie Chart and When Should You Use One?

A pie chart is a circular graph divided into "slices" to illustrate numerical proportions. Each slice represents a category, and the size of the slice is proportional to the quantity or value it represents. Think of it as a simple, visual way to show a part-to-whole relationship, like how different marketing channels contribute to total website traffic.

While pie charts are common, they are best used in specific situations. Here’s when they work well:

• Showing Proportions: Their main strength is showing how individual parts make up 100% of a total. If you want to see the percentage breakdown of sales by region, a pie chart is a natural fit.

• Few Categories: They are most effective in comparing a small number of categories - ideally six or fewer. Any more, and the chart becomes cluttered and difficult to read.

• Significant Differences: Pie charts work best when the values for each slice are noticeably different. If the slices are too similar in size, it becomes difficult for the viewer to tell which is larger without reading the labels.

When to Avoid a Pie Chart

Just as important as knowing when to use a pie chart is knowing when not to use one. A bar chart or column chart is often a better choice if:

• You have many categories: Comparing more than 6-7 categories in a pie chart creates a visual mess. A bar chart can handle many more categories cleanly.

• You need precise comparison: Humans are not great at comparing angles. It’s much easier to compare the lengths of bars than the area of pie slices, especially when values are close.

• You are showing changes over time: A line chart is the standard for tracking trends and changes over a period. Using multiple pie charts for this is clunky and ineffective.

Getting Your Data Ready

Before you can build a pie chart, you need data structured in a way Power BI can understand. At a minimum, your dataset should have two types of fields:

1. A Categorical Field: This is the data that will define your "slices." Think of things like product categories, sales regions, device types, or marketing channels.

2. A Numerical Field: This is the value that will determine the size of each slice, such as sales figures, user counts, or campaign spending.

Imagine you have a simple Excel spreadsheet tracking quarterly sales by region. It might look something like this:

This simple structure is perfect. "Region" would be your categorical field (Legend) and "Sales Amount" would be your numerical field (Values). To bring this into Power BI, you'd use the "Get data" button on the Home ribbon and select your source (like Excel Workbook).

How to Make a Pie Chart: A Step-by-Step Guide

Once your data is loaded into Power BI Desktop, creating the actual chart takes just a few clicks. Follow these steps to build your first pie chart.

Step 1: Open Your Report and Select the Pie Chart Visual

In Power BI Desktop, make sure you're in the "Report" view (the first icon in the left-hand navigation pane). Now, look at the Visualizations pane on the right-hand side. Find the icon for the pie chart and click it.

Step 2: Add the Visual to Your Canvas

After clicking the icon, a greyed-out, placeholder pie chart will appear on your report canvas. You can click and drag the corners to resize it or move it around the page as you see fit.

Step 3: Add Your Data Fields

With the blank pie chart visual selected, look at the Visualizations pane again. You will see several "field wells," including "Legend," "Values," and "Details." Now, from your Data pane (far right), find the fields you want to visualize.

• Drag your categorical field (in our example, "Region") into the Legend field well.

• Drag your numerical field ("Sales Amount") into the Values field well.

Step 4: Review Your Chart!

That's it! Power BI automatically calculates the proportions and generates the pie chart based on the data you provided. Each region now has a colored slice representing its share of the total sales.

Customizing and Formatting Your Pie Chart

A basic chart gets the job done, but to make it clear, professional, and on-brand, you'll want to use Power BI's formatting options. Select your pie chart, then click the "Format your visual" icon (it looks like a paintbrush) in the Visualizations pane to get started.

Customizing the Legend

The legend tells viewers what each color represents. You might want to move it or turn it off entirely.

• Expand the Legend section.

• Position: You can choose from options like "Top right," "Bottom center," etc., to best fit your report layout.

• Text: Here, you can change the font, size, and color of the legend text.

• Title: You can toggle the legend title on or off, or rename it to something more descriptive. For a clean look, if your labels are clear, you can simply turn the entire legend off.

Formatting the Slices and Colors

Changing the colors can help you emphasize a particular category or align the chart with your company's branding.

• Expand the Slices section.

• Here, you will see a list of all your categories (e.g., North, South, East, West) with a color picker next to each one.

• Click the color box to choose a new color for any slice.

Improving the Data Labels

Data labels are arguably the most important part of a pie chart, as they display the actual values or percentages. By default, they might just show the category name.

• Expand the Detail labels section.

• Under Label contents, you have a dropdown with several options. "Category, percent of total" is a great choice as it shows both the slice's name and its percentage share, which is often the most insightful view. Other options include "Data value," "Category," or combinations.

• Under Values, you can further format the text, adjust decimal places, and resize the font to improve readability.

Adjusting the Title

Every chart needs a clear, descriptive title.

• Go to the General tab within the "Format your visual" pane.

• Expand the Title section.

• Here you can edit the title text, change the heading type (H1, H2, etc.), and customize the font, color, and alignment. A good title might be "Total Sales by Region for Q3."

Advanced Tips for Effective Pie Charts

Beyond basic formatting, you can make your pie charts more dynamic and insightful with these tips.

Use a Donut Chart as an Alternative

A donut chart is essentially a pie chart with a hole in the middle. Many data visualization experts prefer donut charts because they downplay the somewhat misleading use of area and angle comparison, focusing more on the arc length of each category. They also look more modern. Happily, it's a separate visual right next to the pie chart in the Visualizations pane and uses the exact same setup process.

Enable Cross-Filtering and Cross-Highlighting

One of Power BI's best features is its interactivity. By default, your pie chart is connected to all other visuals on the same report page. Clicking on a slice (for example, the "East" region) will automatically filter or highlight all other charts and tables on the page to show data only for that region. This is fantastic for exploratory analysis, allowing users to slice and dice the data dynamically.

Set Up Drill-Downs

If your data has a natural hierarchy (e.g., Region > Country > City), you can add multiple fields to the Legend well. This creates a drill-down functionality. Users can right-click a slice and "Drill Down" to see the proportions within that next level of the hierarchy, offering a deeper layer of analysis right within the same chart.

Final Thoughts

Mastering the pie chart in Power BI is a fundamental step toward building clear and effective reports. By following these steps, you can quickly move from raw data to a formatted, insightful visual that communicates proportional data at a glance. Remember to use pie charts where they excel: showing part-to-whole relationships with a small number of categories.

While creating a single chart in Power BI can be straightforward, the real challenge often lies in connecting all your different data sources and quickly iterating on insights without getting lost in menus. This is where Graphed comes in. We designed it so you can skip the setup time and tedious configuration. Just connect your marketing and sales platforms (like Shopify, Google Analytics, Salesforce, etc.) and ask questions in plain English. Instead of clicking through menus to build your visual, you can simply type, “Show me current quarter sales by region as a pie chart,” and we’ll build a live dashboard for you in seconds.