Display Percentage in Tableau Pie Chart : Bijay Kumar

August 14, 2025 August 14, 2025

Display Percentage in Tableau Pie Chart
by: Bijay Kumar
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### Summary of the Content The content is a tutorial on how to display percentages in a Pie chart using Tableau, specifically for visualizing sales by product category. The author explains the importance of showing percentages rather than raw sales figures, as it provides a clearer understanding of each category's contribution to total sales. #### Key Steps to Create a Pie Chart with Percentages: 1. **Create a Pie Chart**: Connect to Tableau's Superstore dataset, add the product category to the color card, and select the measure (like sales) for the angle of the pie. 2. **Display Percentages**: Change the sales figures to percentages by selecting the "Percent of Total" option under Quick Table Calculation. 3. **Format Labels**: Drag the sales measure to the label card, format it to show percentages without decimals, and adjust the label alignment and color for better visibility. The tutorial emphasizes that showing percentages helps in making quick comparisons between different categories. The final output will clearly indicate each category's sales share as a percentage of total sales. ### Additional Context Using percentages in visualizations like pie charts is a best practice in data visualization, as it allows stakeholders to quickly grasp the relative importance of different categories. This technique is especially useful in sales reports, marketing analysis, and any scenario where understanding proportions is crucial. ### Hashtags for SEO #Tableau #DataVisualization #PieChart #SalesAnalysis #TableauTutorial #BusinessIntelligence #DataScience #Analytics #VisualAnalytics #TableauTips

Recently, I created a Pie chart using Tableau to show sales by product category for a monthly review. The pie chart displayed the slices with different colors representing each subcategory’s sales.

To show the share of Sales of each sub-category in the overall sales, I decided to display the Sales percentage instead of sales figures. For this, I need to change the format of the text label and need to make changes in the calculation.

In this Tableau tutorial, I will explain how to display the percentage in a Tableau Pie chart.

Percentage in Tableau Pie Chart

In a Tableau Pie chart, percentages show the proportion of a specific category compared to the total of all categories combined. Instead of showing numbers like sales, percentages show each slice as a share of the total, making it easy to understand relative sizes.

For example, if the total sales are $100,000 and the Furniture category shares sales of $38,000, its percentage share would be 38%. Seeing 38% instead of 38,000 shows that Furniture shares more than one-third of the total sales.

Display Percentage in Tableau Pie Chart

To display the percentage of a measure, such as sales and profit, we will first create a Pie chart using Tableau’s Superstore dataset.

Connect the dataset with Tableau and follow the steps below:

Create the Pie Chart

If you have not already created the Tableau Pie chart, first do that by following the steps below.

In this pie chart, I will show the share percentage of product categories in overall sales. For this, we need to add the dimension (category) to the color card in the Marks section.

Create a Pie Chart with percent in Tableau

After adding the dimension, change the Mark type to Pie Chart.

To distribute the data in the slices of the pie chart, we need to select a measure such as sales or profit. In this example, we are displaying the sales share of the category, and for this, we add Sales to the Angle card in the Marks.

In this pie chart, we can see the share of sales of a specific category out ot total sales.

Display Percentages on a Pie Chart

As of now, the sales shares of the category are displayed in numbers. To display them in percentage, click on the Sales in the Angle card and select Quick Table Calculation > Percent of Total.

Percentage of total in Tableau pie chart

Now, as we hover on the pie chart, the slices will show the sales share in percentage.

To display the percentage on the pie chart slices as a label, drag the Sales(angle) to the Label card in the Marks section.

To exclude the decimals in the sales percentage, right-click on the Sales label in the Marks section and select Format.

Remove Decimal form percent in Pie Chart

In the Default section, click on the Numbers dropdown and select Percentage. In the decimal places, set the number to 0 to remove decimals.

Display percentages in Tableau Pie chart

This will display the percentages in the Pie chart without decimal values.

At last, you can also adjust the alignment of the text label on the pie chart. To do this, click on the Label card in the Marks section, and then select the text position from the Alignment menu. Here, we can also change the label color from the Font.

The final output will be as shown in the image below, where we can see the percentage of sales share of the product category from the overall sales.

This way, we can show percentages in the Tableau pie chart by formatting the measure labels.

Conclusion

In this Tableau tutorial, we have learned how to display percentages in a Tableau pie chart instead of numbers. We first understood what percentage shows in a pie chart means and why it’s useful for comparing categories.

Then, we created a pie chart using Tableau’s Superstore dataset, applied the percent of total calculation to display the percentage in the Tableau Pie chart.

By following the above steps, you can show the measure share in a Tableau pie chart as a percentage. You can follow the same approach for any scenario where you need to show proportions as percentages in a Tableau pie chart.

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