Cannot insert a pie-chart into Excel

Question

Hi.

So I have an excel spreadsheet with data we've received. This data is in the form of text (for example, "Car", "Bicycle" etc.)

I'd like to present this data in a pie-chart for a report - so 4 people responded car, 2 people responded van - and it can be visualised at a glance what percentage of respondents with.

I've highlighted the column, went to the Insert Tab, and selected "Insert Pie or Doughnut Chart"

However, this hasn't created a pie chart at all.

What exactly is going wrong with this chart? I tried taking the data out from the spreadsheet (this was exported from the internet) to put it in an empty spreadsheet, and got a similar result, except now it listed lots of numbers - equal to the number of responses

The title is correct for this one, but still no pie. Additionally, I was thinking instead of listing each response uniquely, it would collate them by group - so 4 people responded one way.

I know this isn't a matter of the names being entered differently, as this was filled in via a check-list format, so that seems unlikely.

If anyone knows what I'm doing wrong, that would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Answer 1

Excel cannot create a chart from text values alone. It needs numeric data to plot.

First, create a pivot table from the data. Add the method of travel field to both the Rows area and the Values area.

Then create a pie chart from the pivot table.

Answer 2

Hi,

Thank you for this - I'm not too familiar with pivot charts, but I tried what you recommended and it worked perfectly!

Will definitely look into pivot charts more, as they seem like they'll be handy.

Thank you.