Comments on: Pie for Dessert Again?

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 20:11:13 +0000

Two points:

If you have read the article, you should be asking how to plot the data in a bar chart.

You need to convert the data into numbers. Presumably counts. You can massage the data with a pivot table. Create a pivot table from the list of labels, then add the label field to both the row area and the data area of the pivot table. You will get a list of the labels and a count of the number of each label, which you can then plot.

By: Singh

Singh — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 11:52:25 +0000

Respected Sir,
I was trying to plot a pie chart with non-numeric data and when I use the standard methd of selecting the data after selecting the chart type, it just shows me the data in that column itself without the chart. Your help is highly appreciated.

Thanks and Regards

By: Coach

Coach — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 14:47:44 +0000

@Jon – thanks for the reply – I agree a stacked bar or column chart would be much easier from an analysis point of view but for the reason I’m using it I need to have it in the pie style format (the circular format helps with some ‘achieving completeness’ aspects of psychological processes I’m working on.. a little airy fairy I know but it does work!)

@Joe – thanks for the brilliant link… the manual donut formatting made my eyes pop out after a while but managed to get it working perfectly in the end.. thanks so much.

Now for the next challenge of creating an interactive web form that can produce one of those charts dynamically online… yikes! Is there an easy way of doing it that you can suggest?

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 20:25:31 +0000

Joe -

I was thinking of that, and for simple data like this it would probably adequately show the data. However, a bar/column is still easier to make and easier to interpret.

By: Joe Mako

Joe Mako — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 19:30:54 +0000

Coach,

you might be able to get the result you are looking for by building off of “The Consultant’s Chart” – http://www.excelcharts.com/blog/the-consultants-chart-revisited/ (circumplex chart)

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 19:21:36 +0000

Coach -

This is not easy to do in Excel. Couldn’t you use a stacked bar or column chart? It would be easier for you to create and maintain, and for the reader to compare non-adjacent points in a column/bar than in a pie.