We can automate a lot of things with excel sometimes though we need to have visual appeal. Using charts to impact our audience instead of plain boring numbers makes sense. Pie charts are one of Excel’s most options used to display number and percentage information. You can actually keep the slices within a pie chart together or select them all and separate them for further impact. But, one feature that we don’t use often is separating just one slice from the pie chart to highlight that specific piece of data. I’ll show you how to create a pie chart and highlight just one part of it in a couple of easy steps.
1. For this lesson, we’ll use salespersons and profit information from a beverage distribution company. First, go to Insert>Chart and the chart wizard formatting box will appear. Under “chart type” select the pie chart and under “chart sub type” select the first image, and click Next.
2. Now select the data range that you want to chart in the pie chart – in this example, select all the salespersons and profits data as seen in the
screen shot below, and click Next. Then, click on the “Data Labels” tab and select “Percentages,” so that the profits data is displayed as percentages instead of dollar values. Finally, click Next and select the second option to place the pie chart in the same spreadsheet.
3. Your pie chart should look like the image below. Now click on the actual pie chart so that you can see how the whole pie chart slices are selected – at this point you could drag out all the pieces and they would separate from each other. Now deselect the whole pie chart and click on the light green, 16% slice. Notice that only that slice is selected and drag it out slowly. As you can see it will separate from the pie chart alone leaving the other pieces attached together. The image should look like the last screen shot. You did it! Now you know how to separate just one slice from a pie chart for maximum impact.
