How to Create a Donut Chart in Excel with ChatGPT

Creating a beautiful donut chart in Excel doesn't have to feel like a tedious memory test of clicking through menus. You can actually use ChatGPT as a smart assistant to guide you through the process, turning a potentially frustrating task into a quick win. This tutorial will walk you through preparing your data, crafting the right prompts for ChatGPT, and using its output to build and customize a professional-looking donut chart in Excel.

What is a Donut Chart and When Should You Use It?

A donut chart is essentially a pie chart with the center cut out. That simple difference makes it much more versatile. While a pie chart shows how individual parts make up a whole for a single data series, a donut chart can display multiple concentric rings, allowing you to compare parts-of-a-whole across several categories or time periods in one compact visualization.

The empty space in the middle isn't just for looks, it’s prime real estate for a title or a key summary metric, like a total value or an overall percentage.

Use a donut chart when you want to:

• Compare the composition of something over two periods (e.g., marketing channel mix in Q1 vs. Q2).

• Show progress toward a fundraising campaign goal, with one ring for donations received and another for the target.

• Visualize survey responses from two different demographics side-by-side.

Think of it this way: if you're tempted to put two pie charts next to each other for comparison, a donut chart is almost always a cleaner, more effective solution.

First, Prepare Your Data for Excel

Like any chart, the final result is only as good as the data you feed it. Before you even open ChatGPT, you need to structure your data logically in an Excel sheet. Clean, simple tables are best.

Let’s say you want to compare your website traffic sources between the first and second quarters. Your table should be set up like this:

Key Tips for Data Formatting:

• Use Clear Headers: Label each column distinctly (e.g., "Marketing Channel," "Q1 Sessions"). The first column should contain your categories, and the subsequent columns should contain the numerical data for each series.

• Keep It Simple: Avoid merged cells or complicated layouts. A straightforward table is all you need. The headers will appear in your legend, so keep them short and descriptive.

• Ensure Numerical Data: The values you’re plotting must be numbers. Don't include commas or currency symbols in the cells themselves, use Excel's cell formatting instead if needed.

Crafting the Perfect Prompts for ChatGPT

Once your data is ready, you can turn to ChatGPT to act as your personal Excel tutor. The key is to be specific in your requests. Vague prompts give vague answers, but clear prompts get you actionable, step-by-step instructions you can follow easily.

Level 1: The Basic Prompt

You could start with something simple, but it will only give you general directions.

How do I make a donut chart in Excel?

ChatGPT will provide a generic but correct answer, outlining the basic steps: select data, go to Insert, find the chart, and click it. This is helpful but requires you to figure out exactly what data to select.

Level 2: The Specific Prompt (This is much better!)

Let's give the AI context about our specific data table. This is where the magic happens. A detailed prompt makes the response tailored to your exact needs.

This prompt tells ChatGPT the precise structure, location, and intent of your data. The resulting instructions will be incredibly easy to follow, as they'll reference your specific columns and cells.

Level 3: The Customization Follow-Up Prompt

After creating the basic chart, you'll want to make it look great. You can ask for follow-up instructions.

By asking targeted follow-up questions, you can get instructions for detailed formatting without needing to hunt through Excel’s numerous options.

Step-by-Step: Building the Donut Chart in Excel

Using the instructions generated by our "Level 2" prompt, let's walk through creating the chart in Excel itself.

1. Select Your Data Correctly: For a multi-ring donut chart, you need to select both the labels and all the data series. Using our example, click and drag to select the entire range from cell A1 to cell C6. Including the headers (row 1) helps Excel automatically create the legend correctly.

2. Insert the Chart: Navigate to the Insert tab on Excel's ribbon. In the Charts group, click on the icon that looks like a pie chart ("Insert Pie or Doughnut Chart"). A dropdown menu will appear. Select the Doughnut option.

3. Initial Chart Review: Excel will immediately drop a default donut chart onto your worksheet. It will likely have two rings representing Q1 and Q2. The inner ring represents your first data column (Q1 Sessions) and the outer ring represents the second (Q2 Sessions). It won’t be beautiful yet, but the core structure is there.

Customizing Your Donut Chart for a Professional Look

A default chart gets the job done, but a well-formatted one tells a clearer story. Here’s how to apply the customization steps we prompted ChatGPT for.

Edit Colors and Hole Size

Excel's default colors might not match your brand or highlight what's important. To change them:

• To change a single segment: First, right-click on the outer ring (our Q2 data). All segments will be selected. Click again on just the "Paid Ads" segment to select it individually. Right-click it and choose Format Data Point. In the pane that appears, go to the "Fill & Line" (paint bucket) icon, select Fill, and set your desired color. You can enter the hex code #FF6347 here.

• To adjust the hole size: Right-click on either data series and select Format Data Series. In the "Series Options" tab, you'll find a slider for Doughnut Hole Size. Increasing the percentage makes the rings thinner and gives you more space for a title in the middle. A size between 65%-75% usually looks good.

Add Clear Data Labels

Numbers without context are useless. Add clarity with data labels.

Right-click the outer ring and select Add Data Labels. Repeat for the inner ring. Initially, Excel will likely just show the raw session numbers. To make them more useful, right-click any of the new data labels and choose Format Data Labels. Here, you can choose to show the Category Name, Value, or Percentage. Often, showing category name and percentage is the clearest option, reducing reliance on the legend.

Place a Dynamic Title in the Center

The empty center is perfect for a main title or a summary KPI. Directly typing text there is not an option, but there's a clever workaround.

1. On the Insert tab, go to Text > Text Box.

2. Draw a text box in the center of the donut chart.

3. Do not type anything inside the box. Instead, click on the border of the text box to select it.

4. Now, click into the Formula Bar at the top of Excel.

5. Type an equals sign (=) and then click on the cell containing your desired title. For our prompt example, we would click on cell D1. The formula bar will now read =D1.

6. Press Enter.

Your text box is now dynamically linked to cell D1. If you change the text in D1, the title within your chart will update automatically. Format the text box by removing its border and fill to make it blend in seamlessly.

Final Thoughts

Mastering donut charts in Excel expands your data visualization toolkit, allowing you to tell more complex stories than a simple pie chart can. By leveraging ChatGPT as your on-demand guide, you can bypass the steep learning curve and focus on creating insightful, polished visuals without memorizing every button and menu.

Building charts one by one can still be a friction point, even with a great assistant like ChatGPT. The process moves from figuring out the steps to simply executing them. At Graphed, we eliminate both. As an AI-native data platform, we turn your natural language questions into fully interactive dashboards instantly. You simply connect your data sources once, then ask something like, "Show me last quarter's web traffic by source as a donut chart." There are no instructions to follow because we create the live, auto-updating visualization for you in seconds. If you're ready to skip the manual setup completely, try Graphed and chat directly with your data.