Excel Pie Chart Sizing (2000)

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We have a very large PPT presentation and there are several slides which contain various Excel pie chart – in some cases there are 4 charts on one slide. Each piie chart tends to be a different size, however. We would like to size them all identically. Any pointers, anyone?

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Are the chart “boxes” different in size, or the “pies”?
Do the pie charts have legends, and if so, are all legends the same size?
Do the pie charts have data labels, and if so, are they all the same size?

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Thanks for your response, Hans. The chart boxes are all the same, but everything else varies in size.

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If the legends and value labels are different in size, it will be almost impossible to get the pies the same size. Excel automatically resizes the pie area to fit the legend and value labels. You can make the plot areas the same in size using code, but not the actual pies themselves…

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Thanks, again. I suspected as much.

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If you turn off the legend and value labels in each of the charts, you can make the pies equal in size, but that might defeat your purpose. (You could provide the legend on the slide, outside the charts)

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If you turn off the legend and value labels in each of the charts, you can make the pies equal in size, but that might defeat your purpose. (You could provide the legend on the slide, outside the charts)

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Thanks, again. I suspected as much.

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If the legends and value labels are different in size, it will be almost impossible to get the pies the same size. Excel automatically resizes the pie area to fit the legend and value labels. You can make the plot areas the same in size using code, but not the actual pies themselves…

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I used to do this for a living — reformatting text & charts from several sources to be consistent. For four pie charts on a page — you need to design for the “busiest” chart and resize the other three to match. It can be time-consuming. In broad strokes, the process is this:

Save a copy of the PPT just in case things go horribly wrong.

Begin in the busiest chart which will become the model. Write down the size of the font for the labels/legend. Using the drawing toolbar, draw a box with no fill, and a plain red line,surrounding the pie just large enough for the pie. Use FORMAT AUTOSHAPE,and write down the size of the box. Copy the box to the clipboard. Go to the next chart, paste the box into the middle of the next chart, change the font of the legend/labels to match your model, select the pie’s bounding box (when the pie as a whole is selected, a normally invisible box around the pie becomes visible. Stretch or contract the pie so that once again your drawn box surrounds the pie as in your busiest chart. If the font changes (common in Excel), reformat back to your model. You should resize your pie proportionally by using the corner handles of the bounding box. Repeat as needed across your charts.

Ideally your assumptions match mine.
** Regardless whether the charts are embedded Excel objects or pasted pictures of charts, the object size in PPT is 100% Many non-professionals in PPT, resize the object to make it larger or smaller. This makes it impossible to maintain consistency. 12-pt labels in a chart at 80% will look smaller than 12-pt labels in a chart at 120%. To resize charts back to 100%, you can usually right-click the chart and select FORMAT (OBJECT/PICTURE/CHART) looking for size to be 100% Resizing of chart elements should be done from Excel. Particularly if the pie size is grossly wrong when the object is at 100%, look at my other assumptions.

If a pie at 100% is grossly wrong, the chart sheet margins ought to be changed. If you don’t have the time to re-do the chart, keep the sizing of the chart object/picture as consistent as possible. charts on the same page should be sized the same, but you can get away with different sizing on other pages. Ideally all your charts in Excel are on their own chart sheet rather than embedded onto a worksheet that contains the data. Chart Sheets tend to to have uniform dimensions, whereas a chart on a worksheet can be all different sizes. Each chart sheet can have its own page margins, and you’ll want those margins to be consistent in each chart.

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Thanks for this! Very informative.

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Thanks for this! Very informative.

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