How to Make a Circle Chart in Excel with ChatGPT

Building a compelling circle chart in Excel can quickly turn raw numbers into a clear visual story, but getting started is often the hardest part - from wrangling the data to finding the right formatting options. This article will show you not only how to create classic pie and doughnut charts in Excel but also how to use an AI assistant like ChatGPT to streamline the entire process. You'll learn how to generate sample data, get instant step-by-step instructions, and even automate chart creation with simple prompts.

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What is a Circle Chart (and When Should You Use One)?

While Excel doesn't have a specific "circle chart" button, the term almost always refers to one of two chart types: a pie chart or a doughnut chart. Both are designed to show how individual parts make up a whole, representing proportions or percentages. But to use them effectively, it's important to understand where each one shines and what their limitations are.

Pie Charts: For Simple Proportions

A pie chart is the classic circle chart. Each slice represents a category, and the size of the slice is proportional to its value compared to the total.

Use a pie chart when:

• You are comparing parts of a single whole.
• The total numbers add up to 100%.
• You have fewer than seven categories. Any more, and the slices become too small to read easily.

A great example is showing the percentage breakdown of marketing budget allocation: Social Media Ads (40%), Google Ads (30%), Content Marketing (20%), and Email Marketing (10%).

When to avoid them: Don't use pie charts to compare different data sets or show changes over time. Your brain has a hard time accurately comparing the sizes of angled slices, making it difficult to spot subtle differences between two separate charts.

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Doughnut Charts: The More Versatile Circle Chart

A doughnut chart is essentially a pie chart with the center cut out. This simple change makes it more versatile. The empty center creates space to display a key piece of information, like the grand total value or a key title.

Use a doughnut chart when:

• You want to show parts of a whole, just like a pie chart.
• You want to display a total value or key metric in the center of the chart.
• You need to visualize multiple data series. You can stack doughnut charts inside each other (though this should be done with caution to avoid confusion).

The empty space also makes the chart feel a bit lighter and more modern than a traditional pie chart.

Step 1: Use ChatGPT to Prepare Your Data

Before you can make any chart in Excel, you need clean, well-structured data. This is where ChatGPT can save you a surprising amount of time. You can use it to generate sample data sets based on a specific scenario, giving you a perfect template to work with.

Let's imagine you're a marketer who wants to visualize your website traffic sources from the last quarter. Instead of fumbling with your analytics, you can just ask ChatGPT to create the data structure for you.

Example ChatGPT Prompt

Here’s a simple prompt you can copy and paste:

"I need to create a pie chart in Excel to show an e-commerce store's website traffic sources for Q4. Create a simple table with two columns: 'Traffic Source' and 'Sessions.' Include Organic Search, Direct, Social Media, Paid Advertising, and Referral traffic. The total sessions should be around 250,000. Please distribute the numbers realistically."

ChatGPT's Generated Table

In a few seconds, ChatGPT will provide a clean, ready-to-use table that you can copy directly into Excel:

Now, instead of starting from scratch, you have perfectly formatted data to work with. Let's move this into Excel and build our chart.

Step 2: How to Make a Pie Chart in Excel

With your data prepped, creating the chart itself only takes a few clicks. Follow these steps to build a standard pie chart.

1. Enter Your Data in Excel

Copy the table from ChatGPT (or enter your own data) into two columns in your spreadsheet. For example, put "Traffic Source" in column A and "Sessions" in column B.

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2. Select Your Data

Click and drag your mouse to highlight all the cells containing your data, including the headers (in our example, a range like A1:B6).

3. Insert the Pie Chart

Navigate to the Insert tab on Excel’s ribbon. In the Charts section, click the Insert Pie or Doughnut Chart icon. A dropdown menu will appear. Select the first option under "2-D Pie."

An instant pie chart will appear on your worksheet!

4. Customize Your Pie Chart

The default chart is functional but uninspiring. Here’s how to make it presentation-ready:

• Add a Title: Double-click on the "Chart Title" placeholder and give it a descriptive name, like "Website Traffic Sources - Q4."
• Add Data Labels: Click once on your chart to select it, then click the green plus icon (Chart Elements) that appears on the right. Check the box for Data Labels. To show percentages instead of raw numbers, click the small arrow next to Data Labels and select More Options.... In the Format Data Labels pane, check "Percentage" and uncheck "Value."
• Change Chart Style: With the chart selected, go to the Chart Design tab. Here, you can choose from a gallery of pre-built styles and color palettes.

Step 3: Creating a Doughnut Chart and Adding a Total

Making a doughnut chart follows the exact same initial steps, but with one key difference in chart selection and some unique formatting opportunities.

1. Insert the Doughnut Chart

Using the same data, go back to the Insert tab → Charts → Insert Pie or Doughnut Chart. This time, select the "Doughnut" option.

2. Format Your Doughnut Chart

You can customize the title and data labels just like you did with the pie chart. Here are some doughnut-specific tweaks:

• Adjust the Hole Size: Right-click on the doughnut itself and select "Format Data Series." A pane will open on the right where you can adjust the "Doughnut Hole Size" using a slider. A smaller hole makes it look more like a pie chart, while a larger hole provides more space for text.
• Add Text in the Middle: The central hole is the perfect space to show your total. Go to the Insert tab → Text → Text Box. Draw a text box in the middle of your chart, type in the total sessions (e.g., "Total Sessions: 250,000"), and format the text to be readable. You may need to calculate this total with a SUM formula in your spreadsheet first.

This simple addition of a total value can make your doughnut chart much more informative than a standard pie chart.

Level Up: ChatGPT for Advanced Customization and Automation

Beyond data generation, you can use ChatGPT as your personal data visualization consultant and automation assistant. This is where you can truly separate your charts from the default Excel templates.

Asking ChatGPT for Professional Color Palettes

Tired of Excel’s default color schemes? Ask ChatGPT to act as a design expert.

Example Prompt:

"I am creating a doughnut chart in Excel for a corporate presentation. Give me a professional and visually appealing color palette with 5 colors. Provide the hex codes for each color so I can use them in Excel."

ChatGPT will provide a list of hex color codes (e.g., #0D47A1, #1976D2, #42A5F5, etc.). To use them in Excel, simply right-click a slice of your chart, select Format Data Point, go to the "Fill & Line" (paint bucket) icon, click Fill → More Colors... → Custom tab, and paste the hex code.

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Automating Chart Creation with VBA Scripts

If you find yourself creating the same type of chart over and over, you can automate it with a VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) macro. VBA is Excel's programming language, but you don't need to know how to write it - ChatGPT can do it for you.

Example Prompt:

"Write an Excel VBA macro that creates a 2D pie chart. The macro should use the data in the range A1:B6 on the active worksheet. Title the chart 'Quarterly Performance Report' and add data labels showing percentages."

How to Use the VBA Code from ChatGPT:

1. Open your Excel file and press Alt + F11 (or Option + F11 on Mac) to open the Visual Basic Editor (VBE).
2. In the VBE, click Insert → Module to create a new module.
3. Copy the entire VBA code that ChatGPT provided and paste it into the new blank module.
4. Close the VBE by clicking the 'X' button or pressing Alt + Q.
5. Back in your Excel sheet, press Alt + F8 to open the Macro dialog box. You’ll see your new macro listed. Select it and click Run.

Excel will automatically perform all the steps and create your perfectly formatted chart in an instant. This is incredibly powerful for monthly or weekly reports where the structure stays the same.

Final Thoughts

Creating professional-looking circle charts in Excel is a straightforward process once you know the steps for both pie and doughnut charts. By integrating a tool like ChatGPT, you can radically speed up your workflow by generating data, getting design inspiration, and even automating the whole process with VBA. It turns a manual task into a creative conversation.

While mastering charts in Excel is a valuable skill, sometimes you just need to get straight to the insights without the manual setup. We built Graphed to make data analysis conversational. You can connect your data sources like Google Analytics or Salesforce and just ask for what you need - for example, "create a pie chart of my website sessions by country for last month" - and get a live, interactive chart instantly, no spreadsheets required.