How to Create a Power BI Pie Chart? + Formatting

Do you want to use a Pie chart in your Power BI report? In this tutorial, I will explain everything about the Power BI pie chart like what is a pie chart, how to create a Power BI pie chart, etc.

I will also show a few formatting options in a Power BI pie chart like:

• Adding a Power BI pie chart title
• Formatting options like color, position, effects, etc.

What is a Pie Chart in Power BI?

The Power BI pie chart is a circular graph or visual representing the percentage of the dataset, where each ‘slice’ of the pie represents a percentage of the whole. It is used when you want to visualize the percentage of different categories in a report.

For example, You have a product, and you sell the product in different regions. It shows you how much is selling in a particular region. Check the screenshot below.

Another example is that you have different categories of Product and Sum of Sales. It shows you how much sales each category has. Check the screenshot below.

Create a Pie chart in Power BI

Here, I will show you how to create a Power BI pie chart in a Power BI report. If you are new to Power BI, check out a detailed post on how to create a report in Power BI from a SharePoint list.

Here also, I will use a SharePoint list for creating a pie chart in Power BI. Follow the below steps:

Here is the SharePoint list that I am using for this pie chart. I will highly recommend you create the list before proceeding further. See the screenshot below:

1. Open Power BI Desktop, Click on Get data -> More… from the top navigation bar. Then Click on Online Services -> SharePoint Online List then click on Connect. Then, enter the SharePoint site URL. Click OK to proceed.

2. First, add a pie chart from the Visualizations like below:

3. Here, I want to display the Count of Product Name by Region in my Pie chart. So, drag “Region” from the Data tab and put in the “Legend,” and then drag “Product Name” and put in the “Values” field. Here, choose the value as Count of Product Name as shown in the figure below:

You can see here, it is showing region-wise the product count. This is how to create a Power BI Pie chart. Now, let us see a few customization options.

If the Power BI pie chart is not showing, follow the solution below.

Power BI Pie chart not Showing

If you create a pie chart in a Power BI report and the pie chart is not visible, then you need to check the Values field. Ideally, the Values field should not be blank but contain a value.

Here in the screenshot below, see I left the Values field as empty.

After I added the Count of Product Name, the pie chart appeared as expected.

Power BI Pie chart Formatting

You can also use various formatting options in the Pie chart to make it more attractive.

Click the pie chart -> Format your visual. There are two types of formatting available in visualizations: visual formatting and general formatting.

Visual Formatting

In Visual formatting, Four types of formats are available Legend, Slices, Detail levels, and Rotation.

• Legend: When you click the Legend option, a drop-down will appear. In the drop-down, multiple options are available i.e. Options, Text, and Title. Here, we set the position of the legends, add the title for the legends, and change the text format.

Like, we can change the position of the legend by choosing options like: Center right, Buttom Center, etc. You can see here, that I have changed from Center right to Buttom center.

In the same, you can also change the Legend font color and font family like in the below screenshot.

• Slices: Once you expand the Slices option, you can see the Colors attribute. Here you can change the color of legends.

• Detail levels: In this option, we add more information on the slices, like position, color, font size, font family, value decimal places, and percentage decimal places.

For example, here we will change the position of the label from Outside to Inside. Change Label contents from Data value, percent of total to All detail labels. Its color is from gray to white, the text size is from 9 pt to 12 pt, Font is Segoe UI to Constantia. Check the Screenshot below.

• Rotation: Using this option, we can rotate our pie chart.

General formatting

In General formatting, Six types of formats are available Properties, Title, Effect, Header icons, Tooltips, and Alt text.

• Properties: When we click the Properties option, a drop-down will appear. In the drop-down, multiple options are available i.e. Size, Position, Padding, and Advanced option. We can change the Size, Position, and Padding just by typing the value. Check the screenshot below.

We do not use this option because it is easily accessible with a mouse click. In the Advanced option, you can enable the Maintain layer order.

• Title: When you click the Title option, a drop-down list appears. In this drop-down list, multiple options are available, i.e., Title, Subtitle, Divider, and Spacing. Here, we add a title, subtitle, title background color, divider, font, text color, style, and spacing.

• Effect: When you click the Effects option. A drop-down list appears. In this drop-down, multiple options are available, i.e. Background, Visual border, and Shadow. Here, we add background color, visual border, and border shadow for a pie chart.

• Header-icons: This option is at the top of the visualization. It offers various options, like Background, Border, Icons, and Transparency. We can set its colors according to our choice. In my case, the “Background” color is white, the “Border” color is pink, and the “Icon” color is black.

• Tooltips: When we hover over a slice of a pie chart, a small dialog box appears. In this, we can add a background color, font, label color, and value color.

• Alt text: Alt text for people who can’t see the chart or visuals.

Power BI pie chart sorted by values

When we create a Pie chart, you must see by default it is sorted by values in descending order. We can change it by:-

• Select the visual.
• Click 3 dots at the top of the visual.
• Click Sort axis

Then the dialog box opens here; we can sort by value (ascending/descending) or alphabet (ascending/descending). here “Region” means alphabet, and “Count of Product Name” means value.

Conclusion

Follow the above steps to create a pie chart in Power BI using SharePoint List data. I have explained how to use the pie chart format for visuals such as the legend, slices, detail levels, rotation title, effect, header icons, tooltips, and alt text.