How to Make a Pie Chart in Tableau

Creating a pie chart in Tableau is a fundamental skill for anyone getting started with data visualization. These charts offer a clear and immediate way to show how different parts make up a whole. This guide will walk you through the essential steps to build a pie chart from scratch and share professional tips for making it as effective as possible.

What is a Pie Chart and When Should You Use One?

Before jumping into Tableau, let’s quickly cover the basics. A pie chart is a circular statistical graphic divided into slices to illustrate numerical proportion. Each slice's arc length (and consequently its central angle and area) is proportional to the quantity it represents. In simple terms, it's perfect for showing a part-to-whole relationship.

Imagine you want to see which sales region contributed the most to your total revenue last quarter. A pie chart is an excellent choice. You can instantly see that the "West" region, for example, makes up the largest slice of the total revenue pie.

Best Practices for Pie Charts

Pie charts can sometimes get a bad reputation in the data viz world, usually because they are overused or misused. To keep yours useful and easy to read, follow these simple guidelines:

• Limit the Number of Slices: The ideal pie chart has between two and five slices. Once you get beyond six or seven, the slices become too small to compare effectively, and your chart becomes cluttered. If you have many small categories, consider grouping them into a single "Other" slice.
• Show Proportions: Pie charts only work when the slices add up to a meaningful 100%. Don't use them if you're trying to compare categories that aren't parts of a single whole.
• Avoid Complex Comparisons: Humans aren't great at comparing the size of angles. If your goal is to show the precise difference between many categories, a bar chart is almost always a better choice. For example, comparing sales figures of 50 different products would be nearly impossible with a pie chart but very clear with a bar chart.

With those principles in mind, let’s get started building one in Tableau.

Preparing Your Data for Tableau

The beauty of a pie chart is its simplicity, and the data you need is equally simple. To create a pie chart, you typically need two things:

1. A Categorical Field (Dimension): This determines how your pie will be sliced. It represents the different groups you want to show. Examples include "Region," "Product Category," "Marketing Channel," or "Device Type."
2. A Numerical Field (Measure): This determines the size of each slice. It's the value you want to measure for each category. Examples include "Sales," "Number of Users," "Website Sessions," or "Expenses."

For this tutorial, we will use Tableau’s built-in Sample - Superstore dataset, which automatically loads with Tableau Desktop. It’s packed with sample sales data that’s perfect for practicing.

Step-by-Step Guide: Creating Your First Pie Chart in Tableau

Once you’ve connected to your data source, you’ll land on a blank worksheet. This is where the magic happens. We're going to create a pie chart that shows Total Sales by Region.

Step 1: Select the "Pie" Mark Type

On the left side of your screen is the Data pane, which lists all your Dimensions and Measures. To the right is the main canvas. Between them, you'll find the Marks card. By default, it’s set to "Automatic."

Click the dropdown menu on the Marks card and select "Pie." This tells Tableau you want to build a pie chart. You won't see anything on the canvas yet because you haven't given it any data to visualize.

Step 2: Add Your Measure to Angle

Next, you need to tell Tableau what value should determine the size of each pie slice. In our case, that’s "Sales."

From the Measures section of the Data pane, find the Sales field. Click and drag it onto the Angle property on the Marks card. When you drop it, a full gray circle will appear on your canvas. This circle represents 100% of your sales, but it's not yet sliced because we haven't added a categorical dimension.

Step 3: Add Your Dimension to Color

Now it’s time to slice the pie. To do this, we'll use our categorical dimension, "Region."

From the Dimensions section of the Data pane, find the Region field. Click and drag it onto the Color property on the Marks card. Tableau will instantly slice your circle into four colored segments, one for each region (Central, East, South, and West), and a color legend will appear on the right.

And that's it! You’ve just created a basic pie chart.

Step 4: Adding Labels for Readability

A chart without labels isn't very helpful. Let’s add the region names and their corresponding sales figures directly onto the pie slices.

To add the region names, drag the Region dimension from the Data pane onto the Label mark. You’ll now see the names "Central," "East," etc., on each respective slice.

To add the sales figures, drag the Sales measure onto the Label mark as well. Now both the region and the sum of sales appear on each slice, providing all the necessary context without forcing your audience to consult the legend or tooltips.

Making Your Pie Chart More Effective: Pro Tips

Building the chart is the easy part. Making it insightful and professional requires a few extra touches. Here’s how to level up your pie chart.

Tip 1: Show Percent of Total

While showing exact sales figures is fine, pie charts really shine when displaying percentages. Showing that the "West" region accounts for 30% of sales is often more intuitive than saying it accounts for $725,448.

To convert your sales label to a percentage, follow these steps:

1. On the Marks card, find the SUM(Sales) pill that is on the Label shelf.
2. Right-click on it.
3. From the context menu, navigate to Quick Table Calculation > Percent of Total.

Your labels will instantly switch from dollar amounts to percentages, making the part-to-whole relationship clearer. You can even drag another instance of Sales to the Label card if you want to show both the percentage and the raw value.

Tip 2: Customize Colors and Size

Tableau’s default colors are good, but you may need to adjust them to match your company's branding or to highlight a specific slice.

• To change colors: Click the Color property on the Marks card. A menu will appear where you can click "Edit Colors..." and assign a new color palette or select specific colors for each region.
• To resize the chart: Use the Size slider on the Marks card to make your pie chart larger or smaller. Alternatively, you can press Ctrl + Shift + B to make the chart fill the canvas.

Tip 3: Enhance Your Tooltips

The tooltip is the little box of information that appears when you hover over a mark (in this case, a pie slice). By default, it shows the fields you've used. You can customize this to provide more context.

Click on the Tooltip property on the Marks card. This opens an editor where you can add text, rearrange fields, and even bring in other measures or dimensions for richer hover-over details. For example, you could add the Profit measure to the tooltip so that when you hover over a region, you see its total sales, percent of total sales, and total profit - all in one place.

Tip 4: Avoid Common Pie Chart Mistakes

As mentioned earlier, pie charts are easy to get wrong. Here are some quick things to watch out for:

• Too Many Slices: If your pie chart looks like a Trivial Pursuit wedge, it’s too complicated. Again, stick to 5-6 slices at most. If you need to visualize more categories, a bar chart is a better tool.
• Comparing Pie Charts: Avoid placing two pie charts side-by-side to compare their proportions (e.g., Sales by Region for 2022 vs. 2023). It's incredibly difficult for the human eye to accurately compare the changing slice sizes between two separate pies. A grouped or stacked bar chart would communicate this change far more effectively.
• Using Negative Values: A pie chart represents parts of a whole, so the concept of a negative slice doesn't make sense. Tableau won't render negative values in a pie chart, but if your data contains them, it's a sign that you need to choose a different chart type, like a bar chart that can extend below the zero axis.

Final Thoughts

Mastering the pie chart in Tableau is a simple process of dragging the right fields to the right cards: a measure to Angle and a dimension to Color. By following the tips above for labeling, formatting, and - most importantly - knowing when a pie chart is the appropriate choice, you can create visuals that are both clean and informative.

Learning tools like Tableau is incredibly powerful for deep analysis, but the setup process and learning curve can take time. At Graphed, we’ve made getting those insights as simple as asking a question. Instead of clicking and dragging fields, you can just connect your data sources (like Google Analytics, Shopify, or HubSpot) and ask, "Create a pie chart of our Shopify sales by product category for last month." We instantly build the live, interactive chart for you, saving you from the manual work of building reports and putting insights at your fingertips in seconds.