How to Label a Pie Chart in Excel (6 Steps)

By Cayt Landis

You can use labels to display data points, series names and category names on an Excel pie chart.
i pie chart 201 image by chrisharvey from <a href='http://www.fotolia.com'>Fotolia.com</a>

Microsoft Excel is one of the best software options for creating graphs. Excel offers many different features that make creating any graph easy, be it a pie chart, a flow graph or a bar graph. A quick way to make an useful graph with Microsoft Excel is to enter all of the data and present it in the form of a pie chart. It is important to know how to label a pie chart in Microsoft Excel to get the most out of the graphing features.

Step 1

Open Microsoft Excel and either create a pie chart or open an existing pie chart file. Be sure to have all of the necessary information plugged into the chart before you begin labeling.

Step 2

Click on the chart area to select the chart. The chart area is the chart itself and all of its specific elements.

Step 3

Add a label to all of the data points in the data series by clicking once on the data series. This will select the data series as a whole.

Step 4

Add a label to one specific data point by clicking the data series. Click again on the data point that you want to label to select it.

Step 5

Clicking on the data series or a specific data point will open the "Chart Tools" tab. Locate the "Labels" group and click on the "Layout" tab. Click the "Data Labels" icon and choose a display option. This will automatically label the data points that you previously selected.

Step 6

Create a custom label by clicking on the data label that you created. Click inside of the data label to enter edit mode. Highlight the existing label and retype custom text. This will replace the existing label.

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