This was an intriguing question...how can you set up a pie chart in Excel that appears to divide a dollar coin into wedges?
It is not as easy as you would think. If you try to fill the chart with an image of a coin, Excel repeats the coin image on each wedge of the pie. Cool, but not what we are looking for.
Episode 836 will show you how to successfully get the coin as the background of the pie chart.
This blog is the video podcast companion to the book, Learn Excel 97-2007 from MrExcel. Download a new two minute video every workday to learn one of the 377 tips from the book!
It is not as easy as you would think. If you try to fill the chart with an image of a coin, Excel repeats the coin image on each wedge of the pie. Cool, but not what we are looking for.
Episode 836 will show you how to successfully get the coin as the background of the pie chart.
This blog is the video podcast companion to the book, Learn Excel 97-2007 from MrExcel. Download a new two minute video every workday to learn one of the 377 tips from the book!
Transcript of the video:
Hey, welcome back to the MrExcel netcast, i'm Bill Jelen.
Well, here's another great question from the Southeast Accounting show: Someone said, "I want to make a pie chart out of a coin." So, we have a picture here of a dollar coin, I want to make that into a pie chart.
And you would think that this would be simple to do, but it turns out that it's not.
First of all, my first attack was to select the coin, and we copy the coin to the clipboard, and then I go ahead and create the pie chart.
So, Insert; we'll choose a 2d Pie; and when I select this series I'm going to format the series.
Best way to do that: Ctrl+1.
And on the Fill, I'm going to say it's a Picture Fill, when I Insert from the Clipboard and click Close.
But unfortunately, what they do is they try and squeeze that picture into every slice of the pie-- not what we're trying to do at all.
So, here's the better approach: We're going to build our chart-- actually I'm going to move the coin out of the way first-- we're going to build our chart-- Insert, Pie Chart 2D Pie.
And there's a couple things we have to do.
First of all, I want to get rid of the legend-- turn off legend-- and then in Data Labels, I want to go into More Data Label options; say that I want to see Category name and a percentage; and also say that it's going to be at the outside end-- I want those words outside of the coin-- click Close.
Alright, now, two other things we're going to have to do.
We're going to have to change both the pie itself to be transparent, and the whole chart area to be transparent.
So I'll choose the chart area first, use Ctrl+1 to get in to format that, and say there's no Fill.
Now, I want to do the same thing for the chart itself.
Amazingly, in Excel 2007, we don't have to close the Format dialog box-- I can just reach back here and choose the chart.
And now, on this Fill, I'm also going to say No Fill on the border.
Let's kind of try to figure out a nice thick border; so we use a solid line and choose a color that's going to be complementary to the coin-- so maybe a blue-- and on Border Styles, kind of make a little bit thicker so that way it stands out well against that image in the background.
Alright.
So now, basically, what we've done is we've created a completely blank chart that you can see through.
And I'm going to take my coin and drag it here, right behind the chart, and now, frankly, you just have some adjusting to do.
And it's a little bit maddening as you try and adjust this to get everything to line up.
But give it a few minutes of time, you can get pretty good approximation where you have your chart right on top of the coin, and it looks like you've made a pie chart out of the coin.
Actually, you know, the one last thing I would do here is, I would get rid of the border around the whole chart area-- So we'll Format that and go to Border Color, and say No line, just to make sure that that entire line goes away from the chart.
Pretty cool.
This works in the same way in Excel 2003-- you're going to Format the chart area, No Fil,l Format the series, and No Fill there as well, and then basically try and get it lined up.
It's a little bit tougher in Excel 2003 because as you're moving the chart, the transparency goes away.
You actually can't see the coin as you're moving the chart.
A little improvement here in Excel 2007 to make it just a bit easier.
Well, I want to thank you for stopping by, we'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
[ music ]
Well, here's another great question from the Southeast Accounting show: Someone said, "I want to make a pie chart out of a coin." So, we have a picture here of a dollar coin, I want to make that into a pie chart.
And you would think that this would be simple to do, but it turns out that it's not.
First of all, my first attack was to select the coin, and we copy the coin to the clipboard, and then I go ahead and create the pie chart.
So, Insert; we'll choose a 2d Pie; and when I select this series I'm going to format the series.
Best way to do that: Ctrl+1.
And on the Fill, I'm going to say it's a Picture Fill, when I Insert from the Clipboard and click Close.
But unfortunately, what they do is they try and squeeze that picture into every slice of the pie-- not what we're trying to do at all.
So, here's the better approach: We're going to build our chart-- actually I'm going to move the coin out of the way first-- we're going to build our chart-- Insert, Pie Chart 2D Pie.
And there's a couple things we have to do.
First of all, I want to get rid of the legend-- turn off legend-- and then in Data Labels, I want to go into More Data Label options; say that I want to see Category name and a percentage; and also say that it's going to be at the outside end-- I want those words outside of the coin-- click Close.
Alright, now, two other things we're going to have to do.
We're going to have to change both the pie itself to be transparent, and the whole chart area to be transparent.
So I'll choose the chart area first, use Ctrl+1 to get in to format that, and say there's no Fill.
Now, I want to do the same thing for the chart itself.
Amazingly, in Excel 2007, we don't have to close the Format dialog box-- I can just reach back here and choose the chart.
And now, on this Fill, I'm also going to say No Fill on the border.
Let's kind of try to figure out a nice thick border; so we use a solid line and choose a color that's going to be complementary to the coin-- so maybe a blue-- and on Border Styles, kind of make a little bit thicker so that way it stands out well against that image in the background.
Alright.
So now, basically, what we've done is we've created a completely blank chart that you can see through.
And I'm going to take my coin and drag it here, right behind the chart, and now, frankly, you just have some adjusting to do.
And it's a little bit maddening as you try and adjust this to get everything to line up.
But give it a few minutes of time, you can get pretty good approximation where you have your chart right on top of the coin, and it looks like you've made a pie chart out of the coin.
Actually, you know, the one last thing I would do here is, I would get rid of the border around the whole chart area-- So we'll Format that and go to Border Color, and say No line, just to make sure that that entire line goes away from the chart.
Pretty cool.
This works in the same way in Excel 2003-- you're going to Format the chart area, No Fil,l Format the series, and No Fill there as well, and then basically try and get it lined up.
It's a little bit tougher in Excel 2003 because as you're moving the chart, the transparency goes away.
You actually can't see the coin as you're moving the chart.
A little improvement here in Excel 2007 to make it just a bit easier.
Well, I want to thank you for stopping by, we'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
[ music ]
