And, after lurking in PowerPoint’s preset charts section for far too long, I believe I have the answer. It just takes a little ‘out of the box’ thinking! And luckily, using live charts doesn’t mean that your data has to be dull. So, let’s go get our chart ‘spice’ back.
As I have a sweet tooth, I’m going to demo this approach with a doughnut chart. Let’s say I surveyed 100 people about whether they like doughnuts, pizza and tacos and the results were:
Of course, I need to present this data to the world! So, let’s head to PowerPoint, insert a live chart (Insert > Chart > Pie > Doughnut), and input the data.
Screenshot of PowerPoint doughnut chart using data in body of article.
I’m going to start by getting rid of the standard graph colors and automatically generated layout. To make changes, right click on the chart then select Format Chart Area. Under Series Options you can adjust the size of the doughnut hole and, under Fill & Line, you can edit the colors/gradients of each segment. Then you can arrive at something like this:
Screenshot of the same chart as previously but phone code portugal the colors have changed, some of the segments have smooth gradients and others are faded back making the chart easier to read.
Okay, it’s getting better! But . What if I told you that you could round the segment edges and include icons AND it would stay as a live chart? Let’s go!
To round the edge of the segments that start at 12 o’clock on your doughnut follow these steps:
Right click on your chart and select Edit Data
In the Excel sheet, add a row at the top and enter a value of 0.01 for each column. This row will allow us to round the segment, so I’ve called it ‘Start – Round’.
The row for the ‘yes’ responses is the only one you’ll edit when updating your data so name it something helpful like ‘YES (edit me)’
Where the ‘No’ response data is, we’re going to add a simple Excel formula in each cell which subtracts the sum of the previous two values from 100 to autogenerate the ‘No’ value. In the example below you can see the formula is =100-SUM(B2:B3).
Close the Excel sheet.
Screenshot of excel spreadsheet with the doughnut chart data in. One of the 'No' cells is selected and the formula us shown in the in formula bar