How to Make a Pie Chart in Microsoft Word

You might have come across pie charts in Microsoft Word in reports, research papers and documents. Pie charts are an effective and organized way to present data. Though pie charts look complex, you do not need to take help from computer experts to create them. It is a simple task to create pie charts in the Microsoft Word tool. There are small differences in the use of options and features among the various versions of Microsoft Office. Office 2003 provided a limited interface to create such charts and they never came out that accurate as you wanted them to be. However, with Microsoft Office 2007, it is fairly easy task to do, because it combines the available features in Word and Excel to create pie charts with a professional look.

There are several uses to a pie chart. They are exceptionally useful when you work with a series of data of the same kind, for example, to denote percentages of something. You should also ensure that all values are positive, and the number of divisions is eight or lesser. You can create a pie chart in Microsoft Word by importing values from other programs, or by organizing values in a Word table. Let's look at the steps to creating a pie chart.

1. Click the Insert menu and then click Object.

2. Click the Create New tab.

3. In the Object type box, click Microsoft Graph Chart. Click Ok. Notice that a chart is displayed. It has an associated sample data populated in a table, and this is called a datasheet.

4. Next, you need to replace the sample data with actual data. To replace the data, click a cell. Then enter the new values into the table. Please note that you can import the values from a Microsoft Excel sheet, a text file, or from any other program.

5. You can click the Word Document to return to Microsoft Word.

You can create a pie chart using values from a table in a Word document also. To do this, you need to organize your values in a Word table. You need to place text labels in the top row and left column. Then enter data in the form of numbers in the other cells of the table. After you create the table,

1. Click within the table.

2. On the Table menu, point to Select and then click Table.

3. From the Insert menu, click Object and then click the Create new tab.

4. In the Object type box, double-click the Microsoft Graph Chart option.

You can see that Microsoft Word displays a pie chart with the data taken from the table you created. Further, if you need to edit the data in the chart, you can click a cell and then make the required changes.

After creating a pie chart in Microsoft Word, you can customize it the way you want it to look like. This can be done by changing the layout, color, design and other features of the pie chart using the tools available in Microsoft Word. While you put together the data to create a pie chart, you need to ensure that the percentages in the different sectors add to 100. So, as you could see, a pie chart is one of the most useful tools that help you to organize data, in the most professional form.

Sources :

1. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HP051900461033.aspx

2.http://monsterguide.net/how-to-make-a-pie-chart-in-word