Power BI – Format Pie Chart

A pie chart is a circular chart, which could present values of a dataset in the form of slices of a circle.  We have various options to format pie charts, we can change the value of the legends, rotation, detail labels, etc. In this article, we will learn how to format a pie chart in Power BI and explore its various options.

Formatting a Pie Chart In Power BI

After the successful, creation of a pie chart in Power BI, we have multiple options to format it. For example, adding the title to the chart, changing the color, and position of the chart, and adding tooltips, slicer colors, and detail labels to the chart. We have been given a dataset, name, and Employee, and we have created the pie chart, by adding Department as Legends, Salary as Values,  Employee Name as Details, and Bonus as Tooltips. Using this chart, we will explore every option of a pie chart in Power BI. There are two types of Formatting in visualizations i.e. visual formatting and general formatting.

Visual Formatting

Visual formatting comprises four options i.e. legends, slices, detail labels, and Rotation.

Legends

Legends are the property that is used to sub-categorize the data for better analytics. It divides the data into different sub-groups.

The following are the steps:

Step 1: Click on the Legend option. A drop-down appears. We have multiple options available here i.e. Options, Text, and Title. We can set the position of the legends. Using the Text property, we can change the color and font size of the legends i.e. Department. Click on the Title, to customize the title i.e. Department. 

Step 2: Click on the Options property, and a drop-down appears. We can set the position of the legends accordingly. For example, to Top Center, Bottom left, etc. By default, the Top left is the position.

Slices

Slices refer to similar groups’ data values either as a legend or as a value. Click on the slices option. A drop-down appears. We have one option i.e. Color. We can customize the color of the slices accordingly. 

Detail Labels

Detail labels provide additional information on the slices of the pie chart. For example, Arushi and Gautam have a salary of 50K and 40K, and they want to display that on the slices. Click on the Detail labels option. The salary detail label will be added to the entire chart. Salary is added because while creating the chart, we have added salary in the details option.  Also, a drop-down appears. We have two options i.e. Options, and Values. 

The following are the steps: 

Step 1: Click on the Options property. We can set the position of the detail labels, to inside, outside, preferably outside, etc. We can also set the Label Contents, to a data value, percent of the total, etc. 

Step 2: Click on the Values property. We can set the color of the detail labels, change their font type, and can also change the size of the detail labels. 

Rotation

The rotation is used to change the orientation, of the pie chart. 

The following are the steps:

Step 1: Click on the rotation option. We can rotate the pie chart. See the gif below. 

General Formatting

There are multiple options in general formatting. For a pie chart, we have options like Title, tooltip, effects, alt text, etc. We will look at each of the options in detail.

Property

The property option is generally present in every visualization. It contains three options, Size, position, and Advance options. We, generally do not use these properties, because all are easily accessible with mouse clicks. The size property helps to resize the visualization created. The position property changes the position of the visualization, in the report. The Advance option comprises adding a layer order, which is rarely used.

Title

The title formatting is present in every visualization. As the name suggests, it adds a heading to the visualization. Click on the slider to enable the title.

The following are the steps:

Step 1: Click on the Title option. A drop-down list appears. Add the title, under the Text section. For example, the Sum of Salary by Employee Name and Department. We can view in the image a title is added to the chart. As done previously we can customize the size, font type of the chart, etc.

Step 2: We can also change the color of the title. Under the text color, select the required color. For example, yellow in this case. The title color changes to yellow.

Effects

The effects section comprises three features i.e. Background, Visual Border, and Shadow. All the mentioned properties work according to their names. The background adds a background color to the visualization, the Visual border adds a border around the visualization, and the shadow option creates a shadow on the outskirts of the visualization.

The following are the steps:

Step 1: Click on the Background option. Select the color of the background accordingly. For example, Pink. We can view in the below image that the background of the chart changed to pink.

Header Icons

Header icons are the options, present on the top of the visualization. For a pie chart, there are two options, filter on visuals and more options. Click on the header-icons option, we will get various options, like Background, Border, and Icons. One can set its colors as per choice.

Tooltips

If we hover over a visualization, then we cannot view any information related to the chart. Consider a situation, where we want to display the fields added by hovering over the chart, then this task can be achieved by the Tooltips option. Tooltips have three properties i.e. Options, Text, and Background. Click on the tooltips option. Now, for example, we hover over a slice, then we can view that the employee Name Arushi, Department IT, Salary 50K, and Bonus 20K is displayed. We can set text and background color according to our needs.

Alt Text

Alt text is a property present in each visualization. People generally misinterpret, alt text by its name, they think that alt text will be displayed when they hover over the visualization. Alt text is for the persons, who cannot see the visuals, images, etc. This option is only available if you are using a narrator in your system. When your narrator is active, then this alt text will be spoken by the system. Click on the Alt text, and type the required text.