How to Create & Use Donut Chart in Power BI?

In this Power BI article, we will learn what is donut chart in Power BI, when to use donut chart in Power BI, Power BI donut chart conditional formatting, and Power BI donut chart with total in center with examples.

Also, we will cover some more topics below:

• How to create a donut chart in Power BI
• Difference between a pie chart and a donut chart in Power BI
• Power BI donut chart percentage
• Power BI multi-level donut chart

What is Donut Chart in Power BI

Power BI Donut chart is similar to the Pie chart but with a hole in the center. It is useful for visualizing higher-level data.

It represents data using slices of the donut, with each slice showing the proportion of a category relative to the whole.

When to use donut chart in Power BI

A doughnut chart in Power BI is most effective when used to compare a specific section to the entire system rather than individual sections to one another.

How to create a donut chart in Power BI

Here, we will see how to create a donut chart in Power BI.

For example, we will use the sales Excel table to create a donut chart in Power BI.

• Open Power BI Desktop, click on the Excel workbook, and select the table from your local system.
• Next, select the Donut chart from the Power BI visualization pane.
• Now, you can see a blank donut chart is added to the canvas.

• Then drag and drop the Product Category and Sales to Legend and Values respectively.
• Now you can see the Donut chart in Power BI is showing Sales by product category.

Difference between a pie chart and a donut chart in Power BI

Here, we will see the difference between a pie chart and a donut chart in Power BI.

Refer to this article to know more details: Difference Between Pie Chart and Donut Chart in Power BI

Power BI donut chart with total in center

Here, we will see how to create a donut chart with the total in the center in Power BI.

In this example, we will use the same Sales table and create a donut chart that shows total sales in the center, as shown below.

Unfortunately, Power BI doesn’t provide any formatting to show labels in the center of the donut chart.

So, I will give you an idea for showing the total label in the center of the donut chart. Follow the below steps.

• In Power BI Desktop, load the data using the Get Data option.
• We will create a card; for this, select the card from the visualization pane.
• Then drag and drop the Sales field to the Fields. Now you can see the total sales.

• Next, we will create a Donut chart; for this, select the Donut chart from the visualization pane.
• Then drag and drop the Product Category and Sales to Legend and Values respectively.

• Next, bring the card visual on top of the Donut chart visual in the canvas.
• Then select the Format pane, toggle off the Category label in the visual section, and then click on the General option.
• Expand the Effect section, then expand the Background section, and make the Transparency 100%.

• Then click on the View tab, select the Selection, and bookmark pane.
• Now select both the visuals in the canvas, then click on the more icon in the selection pane.
• Then select Group and select Group. Now, both are coming under a single group.

• In the Bookmark pane, click on the Add button; it will save the current state by creating a new bookmark.
• Now, you can see the total sales in the center in the Power BI donut chart.

This is an example of a donut chart with the total in the center in Power BI.

Power BI donut chart percentage

Here, we will see how to show the percentage in the Power BI Donut chart.

Using the Sales Excel table, we will create a Donut chart in Power. Then, with the help of a detail label, we will show the percentage for each category, as shown below.

To do this, follow the below steps:

• In Power BI, create a Donut chart and then drag and drop the Product Category and Sales to Legend and Values, respectively.

• Next, click on the format pane and then expand the Detail label. Select the Label content as ‘Content, percent of total.’
• Now, you can see the percentage based on the category in the Power BI Donut chart.

This is an example of a Power BI donut chart percentage.

Conditional formatting donut chart Power BI

Here, we will see how to format the slices of a Donut chart. Unfortunately, in Power BI, the Donut chart lacks a conditional formatting option to change slice colors based on conditions.

However, I’ll guide you on how to change the colors of Power BI Donut chart slices.

For example, we will use the same Sales Excel table to create a Donut chart.

We will display the sales based on the segment in the Power BI Donut chart. As a Donut chart, we cannot format the slices, so here we will convert the Donut chart to a bar chart, or you can directly create the bar chart. Then, we will apply the conditional formatting to it and convert it to a Donut chart.

Now, let’s see how we can apply the conditional formatting to slices of the Power BI Donut chart.

• Open Power BI Desktop, and Load the data using the Get data option.
• Select the Stacked bar chart from the visualization pane to create the bar chart.
• To show the sales based on segment, drag and drop the Sales and Product Category columns to the X and Y axes, respectively.

• Next, click on the Format pane, then expand the Bar section.
• Click on the fx in the color section.

• It will open the Conditional Formatting window. Here, select the Format style as a Gradient.
• Select the Sales field in ‘What field should we base this on, ‘and select Sum as Summarization.
• Next, ‘How should we format empty values‘ as ‘As zero‘.
• Then, in Minimum value, select Custom from the dropdown and enter 2000. Select the color.
• For the Maximum value, select Custom from the dropdown and enter the value as 3500. Select the color
• Also, you can enable the middle value by checking the box to add a middle color. Then click on OK.

• Now you can see the color formatting is applied to the bar chart in Power BI.
• Select the Donut chart from the visualization pane to convert the bar chart to a Donut chart.

This is how we can apply conditional formatting to the donut chart in Power BI.

Power BI multi-level donut chart

Here, we will see how to create a multi-level donut chart in Power BI

Using the same sales table, we’ll calculate the target percentage for each category based on the given target (5000).

Then, we’ll find the target difference, which is 1 – the target percentage. After that, we’ll create a multi-layered donut chart where each layer shows the target difference and target percentage for each category.

• Open Power BI Desktop and load the data using the “Get data” option.
• Next, create the following measures to calculate Total Sales, Target Percentage, and Target Difference.

Total Sales = SUM('Sales (2)'[Sales])

Target% = [Total Sales]/5000

Target Diff = 1-[Target%]

Next, create a donut chart, and then add the “Target %” and “Target Diff” measure to the values.

• Add ‘Product Category’ to the ‘Add data field’ in the Filter pane for this visual section. Then, choose ‘Home’ from the Product Category

Next, click on the Format pane and follow these steps:

• Turn off the Legend.
• Disable the data labels.
• In the Slices section, adjust the slices’ color, then go to the Spaces section and increase the inner radius.

First, copy the visual and paste it twice. Next, resize both copies to make them smaller and position them inside the donut chart.

Then, follow these steps to format both charts:

1. Go to the Format pane and click on the General tab. Toggle off the Title.
2. Expand the Effect section, then expand the Background and increase the transparency.
3. Change the color of the slice representing the target percentage.
4. In the Filter pane, select the left category for each donut chart.

Next, create 3 card visuals containing the “Target %” measure in the Fields. Then, in the Format pane, expand the ‘Callout value’ section and decrease the font size.

• Based on the card visual, select the product category from the Filter pane. Then, add the product category to the filter for each card visual. Refer to the screenshot below.
• Rename the visual based on the filtered category.

Click on the Insert tab, then select Shapes from the dropdown menu, and choose the rectangle.

Next, resize it to be smaller and expand the Style section. Then, choose a color for the Fill that matches the donut chart.

Some more articles you may also like:

• How to Show Only Selected Values in Power Bi Pie Chart
• Gauge Chart in Power BI
• Power BI Clustered Bar Chart
• Create Stacked Funnel Chart in Power BI
• How to Create & Use Funnel Chart in Power BI
• Power BI Combine Two Tables With Same Columns

Conclusion

In this Power BI tutorial, we saw the Donut chart in Power BI, when to use donut chart in Power BI, how to create a donut chart in Power BI, and many more:

• Pie chart vs Donut chart in Power BI
• Power BI donut chart with total in the center
• Power BI donut chart percentage
• Working with Power BI multi-level donut chart
• Various conditional formatting donut chart Power BI

Bijay Kumar

After working for more than 18 years in Microsoft technologies like SharePoint, Microsoft 365, and Power Platform (Power Apps, Power Automate, and Power BI), I thought will share my SharePoint expertise knowledge with the world. Our audiences are from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, etc. For my expertise knowledge and SharePoint tutorials, Microsoft has been awarded a Microsoft SharePoint MVP (12 times). I have also worked in companies like HP, TCS, KPIT, etc.