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How To Create A Donut Chart - Tableau

Updated: Mar 14

Author: Ajay CB



What is Tableau?

Tableau is a business intelligence (BI) tool used to make visualizations with data and to make intelligent dashboards and data solutions, and insights to make enhanced business decisions.


What is a donut chart?

A bump chart is a type of visualization chart in BI tools that actually looks like a donut. In many situations, we are in need to find alternatives for a pie chart or for comparing categories. To make the dashboard visually better and easier to understand that's where we can use a donut chart instead.


There are multiple charts that are not available in Tableau by default, but we can create them in just a few steps easily! Let's see how it is done.


Step 1: Open tableau; for this example, I am going to use the sample superstore data set. We are going to view the category-wise sales and click on the “show me “ button on the top right and click on the pie chart.



Step 2: You will get something like this, change the visual to the entire view from standard to view it easily.



Step 3: Create a calculated field with just 0 in it. Check out the picture below for reference.



Step 4: Drag and drop that calculated field twice in the rows area. You will get something like this.



Step 5: Make it a dual axis by clicking the drop-down from the second sum(donut calculation) and clicking the dual axis



Step 6: As you can see, there are two sums (donut calculation) on the marks card. Select the second one and change the viz to a circle and remove all the fields from the marks card.



Step 7: Change the color to white and click on the size button from the marks card and reduce the size.



Step 8: To make it better, click on the first sum(donut calc) and increase its size and adjust the second sum(donut calc) accordingly to increase the size of the donut chart.



Step 9: As you can see, there is an unwanted axis on the left and right and unnecessary lines in the middle of the chart. Let's remove that. Right-click on both axis and uncheck the “show header button.”



Step 10: To remove the dotted line, go right-click on the canvas and go to format and remove zero lines by making it none and adjust the tooltip as needed per requirement, and you are done!



Conclusion

A donut chart can be used as an alternative to a pie chart when comparing categories, and it's more visually aesthetic. Better visuals better the impact on the business stakeholders.


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