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The How To Series (2)

How to Create Animated Pie Charts in PowerPoint

By Marshall Gunnell

Charts are great for visualizing data. Adding animation to charts can make that visualization even better, letting you do things like introduce one piece of a pie chart at a time, so you have more room for discussion. Here’s how to do just that in Microsoft PowerPoint.

First, open up your PowerPoint presentation and go to the slide where you want the animated pie chart. To insert a pie chart, switch to the “Insert” tab and click the “Chart” button.

In the Insert Chart window that appears, select “Pie” from the list on the left. On the right, select the pie chart style you’d like to use from the five options that appear. When you’ve made your selection, click “OK” at the bottom right of the window.

You’ll notice the pie chart has now appeared on the slide and, with it, and Excel chart. Change the labels of the pie chart by editing the text in column A, and enter its respective data in column B. Once done, close the spreadsheet.

Next, select the pie chart and head over to the “Animations” tab. Here, select whichever animation you’d like to use from the available options. In this example, we will use “Wipe.”

Next, click the “Animation Pane” to open that up.

The Animation Pane appears to the right of your slide. Here, double-click the animation you added to your pie chart, or click the arrow next to it and then select “Effect Options.”

A window will appear with effect, timing, and chart animation options. Head over to the “Chart Animation” tab. Here, you can select how the chart animation behaves—as one object or by category. Choosing “As One Object” makes the whole chart appear at once. Choosing “By Category” makes the chart appear one slice at a time, and that’s exactly what we want here.

You can even decide if you want the animation to begin by drawing the chart background.

When you click “OK,” your pie chart will look the same in editing view but hit Shift+F5 to play your slide and then click your left mouse button to watch your new animated pie chart in action.