How to Make a Sunburst Chart in Excel

A sunburst chart is a powerful way to display hierarchical data, showing how a whole is broken down into its parts, level by level. If you've ever found yourself struggling to represent a budget, organizational structure, or complex sales breakdown, this chart might be exactly what you need. This tutorial will walk you through exactly what a sunburst chart is, how to structure your data, and the step-by-step process for creating and customizing one directly in Excel.

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

What is a Sunburst Chart?

Think of a sunburst chart as a multi-layered pie chart. At its core is a central circle representing the top-level category or a total value. Each successive ring moving outward breaks down the previous ring into its smaller components.

Every "slice" in a ring shows how a specific sub-category contributes to its parent category in the ring just inside it. The size of the slice is proportional to its value. This design makes it incredibly easy to see part-to-whole relationships across multiple levels of data at a single glance.

For example, you could visualize total company sales (the center) broken down by continent (first ring), then each continent broken down by country (second ring), and finally, each country broken down by major product line (third ring).

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

When Should You Use a Sunburst Chart?

Sunburst charts aren't for every dataset. They shine when you have hierarchical data - that is, data with clear parent-child relationships. The goal is to illustrate how a main category is divided into its constituent parts.

Here are some ideal use cases:

• Sales Analysis: Show total revenue broken down by product category, then sub-category, and then by individual product.
• Budget Tracking: Visualize the total company budget allocated to different departments, with each department's budget further split into specific projects or expense types.
• Analyzing Website Traffic: Break down total sessions by marketing channel (Organic, Paid, Social), then by source (Google, Facebook), and then by specific campaign.
• Organizational Structures: Display the structure of a company from the executive level down to different teams, though this works best when a numerical value (like headcount or budget) is assigned to each level.

Avoid using a sunburst chart if your data isn’t hierarchical or if you need to show changes over time. A line or column chart is better suited for time-series data. Also, be mindful of complexity, if you have more than three or four levels, the chart can become cluttered and difficult to read.

Prepare Your Data for a Sunburst Chart

The most important step in creating a sunburst chart is structuring your data correctly. Excel needs a clear hierarchy to understand how to build the rings and slices. Your data should be organized in columns, where each column represents a level in the hierarchy, followed by a final column for the values.

Let's use an example of analyzing software sales in the second half of the year. Your hierarchy is: Quarter > Region > Product Type. The value is the sales amount.

Here’s how you would set up your table in Excel:

Key Data Structuring Tips:

• The order of columns matters. The leftmost column is the highest level (innermost ring), and each column to the right is a sub-level.
• Don't leave blanks in your hierarchy columns. You must repeat the parent categories for each of their children. For instance, "Q3" and "NA" are repeated for both "Analytics" and "Productivity."
• The rightmost column must contain the numerical values you want to plot.
• Headers are important! Make sure each column has a clear header defining what that level represents.

How to Make a Sunburst Chart in Excel (Step-by-Step)

Once your data is neatly structured, creating the chart itself is surprisingly easy.

Step 1: Select Your Data

Click on any cell within your data table. It's often best to click and drag to highlight the entire range, including the headers (e.g., A1:D9 in our example), to ensure Excel captures everything correctly.

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

Step 2: Insert the Chart

With your data selected, navigate to the Insert tab on the Excel ribbon. In the Charts section, look for an icon that looks like a treemap or hierarchy chart. Click this icon, labeled "Insert Hierarchy Chart."

A dropdown menu will appear. Select Sunburst.

That's it! Excel will immediately generate a sunburst chart and place it on your worksheet. It will automatically group your categories and size the segments based on the values you provided.

Customizing Your Sunburst Chart for Clarity

The default chart is a great start, but a little customization can make it much more professional and easier to understand.

Modifying the Chart Title

The default title might just be "Chart Title." Double-click on it to edit the text and give it a descriptive name, like "H2 Software Sales by Region & Product."

Adjusting Colors

To change the color scheme, click on your chart to activate the Chart Design tab on the ribbon. From there, you can click Change Colors to pick from a list of predefined palettes. A good practice is to use a palette where the colors for sub-categories are shades or variations of their parent category's color, which reinforces the hierarchical relationship.

Improving Data Labels

By default, Excel might not show all the data labels you want. To customize them:

• Click on the chart.
• Click the "+" icon (Chart Elements) that appears on the right side.
• Hover over Data Labels and click the arrow to see more options.
• Choosing Data Callout can be a good option. This creates labels with leader lines that point to the smaller slices, making your chart less crowded.

In a sunburst chart, the labels are often more effective than a traditional legend, as they appear directly on the segments they describe.

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

Formatting the Data Series

For more detailed control, you can right-click any segment of your sunburst chart and choose Format Data Series.... This opens a panel on the right side of your screen. Here, under Series Options, you can fine-tune things like the angle of the first slice to rotate the chart for better emphasis on specific categories. You can also add borders to the slices to help distinguish them more clearly.

Limitations of Excel's Sunburst Chart

While powerful for static reports, the sunburst chart in Excel has a few limitations:

• Clutter: With many categories or deep hierarchical levels, the outer rings can become extremely fragmented and unreadable.
• Comparisons: It's hard to accurately compare the sizes of non-adjacent segments, especially across different parent categories.
• Lack of Interactivity: Unlike dashboards in purpose-built BI tools, an Excel sunburst chart is static. You can't click to drill down into a category or filter the data dynamically within the chart itself.

Final Thoughts

Creating a sunburst chart in Excel is an effective way to simplify and visualize complex hierarchical data in reports and presentations. By structuring your data correctly and applying a few key customizations, you can quickly build a professional-looking chart that clearly communicates part-to-whole relationships across multiple levels.

While Excel is great for one-off charts, the process of exporting data, scrubbing it, and building reports from scratch week after week can become tedious. At Graphed you’ve made this process painless. We allow you to connect directly to platforms like Salesforce, Shopify, and Google Analytics. Instead of wrestling with spreadsheet layouts, you just describe the dashboard you want in plain English, and our AI builds live, real-time visualizations for you automatically. It saves time and gets everyone on your team looking at the most current data.