Count & Pie Chart from column?

I have a database of information in columns and rows, much like a music library. i want to generate a pie chart from the information of one column, to see usage balances between the amount of times a certain term is used.

i want a pie chart, but if select the column i want and hit pie chart, it doesn't work, because it needs numbers, i need excel to count the amount of same entries and work them into a percentage of total, and then pie-chart it out...

Any help will be greatly appreciated!

To best describe or illustrate your problem you would be better off attaching a dummy workbook, the workbook should contain the same structure and some dummy data of the same type as the type you have in your real workbook - so, if a cell contains numbers & letters in this format abc-123 then that should be reflected in the dummy workbook.

If needed supply a before and after sheet in the workbook so the person helping you can see what you are trying to achieve.

Doing this will ensure you get the result you need!

ah ok, i've just grabbed my iTunes library as a fairly decent example, it's much the same as what i need (see attached)

what i want is a pie chart of the Artist column (starting add n to x), working out how much of a percentage each different entry has as a part of the whole column (there's only one instance of, say, creedance clearwater revival, for example, so this would show up as a tiny segment in a pie, where 'add n to x' would take up a significant amount etc)

i need to do this without manually counting each set of entries (the actual database runs into the millions)

thank you!

J coumn is how many times they are played?

You can make chart by that but Pie would look very tricked with all those poem songs...

no, just a count a display from the 'artist' column.

it's not really about iTunes, it's about counting all the instances in a particular field, working out their significance in the column as a percentage, and then generating the chart from it.

it's really simple, i just don't know how to do it!

The easiest way would be to create a Pivot Chart, but there are so many artists my results are unreadable

is there a way to consolodate the items that fall below 1% (or similar) into an 'other' category?

Yes, in Pivot Table values items can be grouped.
I added a possible solution, maybe you can start from there ?