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Tableau | Data visualisation

Pie Chart in Tableau - Tableau charts

Two minutes to a working pie chart in Tableau, angles and all.

Tim Ngwena •11 August 2022 •1 min read •2 min watch •62K

Part ofTableau Charts

Watch on YouTube

Drag a dimension onto Colour, then switch the mark type to Pie to start the chart
Add a white border via the Colour shelf to create separation between slices
Place your measure on Detail and apply a percentage of total quick table calculation, then drag it onto Angle for accurate proportions
Duplicate the measure onto Label by holding Command/Control and dragging, and add the dimension to Label for slice names

0:00Hey, it's Tim here. I've got two minutes to

0:02show you how to build a pie chart in Table

0:03au.

0:04Let's get stuck in. So I'm going to grab

0:06the dimension that I'm going to use to

0:08separate the

0:08pie chart with. In this case, it's segment.

0:11I'm going to drag it and put it on color.

0:13This will

0:14create three squares on the page. The next

0:16thing I'll do is tell Tableau that I would

0:18like a pie

0:19chart. So go ahead down to pie and we'll

0:21get a pie chart with equal proportions.

0:23This is a great

0:24start. I'll do one thing while I'm here, go

0:26to color, select the border, set it to

0:28white. That

0:28just creates some separation between the

0:30sections. Now I need to have the

0:32proportions accurately

0:33calculated at the moment they're equal

0:35because there's no calculation to be done.

0:37So I'll drag

0:37my sales value, which is going to be the

0:39metric that I'll use to drive my pie chart.

0:41And I'm just

0:42going to put it on detail. The reason I'm

0:43doing that is because I'd like the

0:45percentage of total

0:46to be used in this calculation. So I'll go

0:48down to the little dropdown on the right

0:49hand side of

0:50the pill, go to quick table calculation and

0:52select percentage of total. Now the

0:54percentage of toast

0:55is showing up. I'll grab it and put it on

0:57angle. And now you can see my angles work

1:00perfectly fine.

1:01The last thing I'll do is I'll grab the sum

1:03of cells and I'll duplicate it and put it

1:05on the

1:05label so I can actually see the proportion.

1:07So this way I'm going to hold Command or

1:09Control

1:10and drag that onto the label. And now we'll

1:12see the duplicate value over there. You'll

1:14see there's

1:15two items on the pane here as well. Let's

1:17set this to the entire view to give us a

1:19bit more space.

1:20The last thing I'll do is add some labels.

1:22So again, I'll hold Command and Control,

1:24drag segment onto label and we have a very,

1:26very basic pie chart in tablet.

1:28Thanks for watching. I'll catch you in the

1:29next one.

1:30Hmm.

1:30Okay.

1:35[BLANK_AUDIO]

Rollup

Tim builds a working pie chart in Tableau in under two minutes, showing how to get accurate slice angles using a percentage of total calculation rather than relying on default equal proportions.

Uses a dimension called Segment and a measure called Sales value to build the chart from scratch. No prior sheet setup shown beyond an empty view.

The Breakdown

Put dimension on colour 0:00

Drag the dimension you want to split the pie by (Segment) onto Colour, which creates coloured squares as a starting point.
Switch mark type to pie 0:21

Change the mark type to Pie to get a pie chart, though at this stage all slices are equal since no calculation drives proportions yet.
Drop measure on detail 0:42

Drag the sales measure onto Detail so it's available for a table calculation without yet affecting the view.
Duplicate measure onto label 1:00

Hold Command/Control and drag the sum pill onto Label to duplicate it, then set the view to Entire View for more space.
Add dimension to label 1:20

Hold Command/Control and drag Segment onto Label as well, giving each slice a name alongside its percentage.

Worth Knowing

The default pie mark type gives equal slices until you explicitly drive Angle with a calculated field.
Holding Command/Control while dragging duplicates a pill rather than moving it, useful for getting a measure onto both Detail and Label.

Use It When

Reach for this when you need a quick, accurate pie chart with correctly proportioned slices and labelled percentages, rather than a rough equal-split default.

How this Rollup was made provenance & method

A Rollup is drafted by AI from the video's transcript, then reviewed and edited by Tim. Everything used to produce this one is listed below — the model, the exact prompt, and the source video — so the process is transparent and reproducible.

Transcription: On-device — NVIDIA Parakeet v3 for recent videos, OpenAI Whisper large-v3 for earlier ones. The transcript never leaves the machine or gets published.
Drafting: Claude Sonnet 5 in the cloud, from that transcript.
Prompt: The exact Rollup prompt — the full system prompt, unedited.
Source video: Watch on YouTube
Drafted: 4 July 2026 at 16:06
Reviewed & edited: 5 July 2026 at 09:41 · by Tim Ngwena

Model + prompt + video is everything you'd need to recreate a Rollup like this yourself. The one thing we don't share is the transcript.

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