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Pivot Pie Chart Colors All the Same

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    Question Pivot Pie Chart Colors All the Same

    I create a weekly report and pivot table; to that I added a pie chart and a bar chart. Every day I import new raw data, change the data source and it has worked fine. I have filters set on the pie chart and it has worked. Today when I imported the data, and applied one filter, two adjacent pie slices were the same color; did another filter and the it was fine; another filter and all the pie slices were the same color! why? I have attached examples. And also, why did the square in Legend for one of the items suddenly shrink to a smaller size than the others?
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    Forum Expert teylyn's Avatar
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    Re: Pivot Pie Chart Colors All the Same

    Please don't use pie charts for more than three slices, and please don't use 3D pie charts. Ever. The distortion of the fake perspective can lead to wrong interpretation of the plotted values.

    Pivot charts are notorious for changing data colours when filters are changed. The best way around that is to generate a mirror data source, for e.g. use formulas to pull the values from the pivot table into an area of the worksheet, then build a regular chart off that mirrored data. With a regular chart, your're in control.

    A far better visualisation of this data will be a horizontal bar chart, sorted by value, with the largest value at the top. That can easily be done with a Pivot Chart and you don't have to worry about colours, because all data points will have the same colour.

    Using a horizontal bar chart instead of a 3D pie chart will also make you look more informed and knowledgeable, because you no longer fall for the fake 3D appeal of the last millennium.
    Last edited by teylyn; 02-10-2021 at 04:28 PM.

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    Re: Pivot Pie Chart Colors All the Same

    All good advice and intel! Thank you

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