Rotate a pie chart

Applies To
Excel for Microsoft 365 Word for Microsoft 365 Outlook for Microsoft 365 PowerPoint for Microsoft 365 Excel 2024 Outlook 2024 PowerPoint 2024 Excel 2021 Word 2021 Outlook 2021 PowerPoint 2021 Excel 2019 Word 2019 Outlook 2019 PowerPoint 2019 Excel 2016 Word 2016 Outlook 2016 PowerPoint 2016 OCS-PowerPoint Addin 2010

To change how the slices in a pie chart are arranged, you rotate it. You can do this with pie, 3-D pie, and doughnut charts in Microsoft Excel, or with an Excel chart you've copied to PowerPoint, Word, or Outlook.

For example, in this chart, a couple of the state labels are wedged in under the title. Shifting the pie clockwise can fix that, and also reposition California to emphasize how big a piece of the pie its population is compared to the other four states. As a bonus, California's label becomes more visible. So, let's shift the pie clockwise one third of a circle, or 120 degrees.

  1. Right-click any slice of the pie chart > Format Data Series.

    Pie chart before rotation with overlapping state labels

  2. In the Format Data Point pane in the Angle of first slice box, replace 0 with 120 and press Enter.

    Format Data Point pane with Angle of first slice set to zero degrees
    Now, the pie chart looks like this:

    Pie chart rotated to separate the state labels

If you want to rotate another type of chart, such as a bar or column chart, you simply change the chart type to the style that you want. For example, to rotate a column chart, you would change it to a bar chart. Select the chart, click the Chart Tools Design tab, and then click Change Chart Type.

Change Chart Type command on the Chart Design tab

See Also

Add a pie chart

Available chart types in Office

Change axis labels in a chart