Chart maker from table data: bar, pie, line

A slice angle is its value divided by the total of all values, times 360°. Turn on “For graph paper” and a table with the work for every row appears under the chart: share, percent, exact and rounded degrees. When plain rounding would not add up to 360°, the tool moves one or two slices by a degree, marks them with an asterisk and explains why — otherwise a protractor would not close the circle.

The scale is chosen for you: the roundest number of the form 1, 2, 2.5 or 5 followed by zeros that keeps the tallest bar within the chosen height — 20 squares (10 cm) by default. If your assignment gives a scale, such as “1 square = 200 km”, type 200 into the “1 square =” field. Bar heights are rounded to half a square, and the worked table shows both the exact division and how many squares to draw.

Select the range together with its headers, copy it and paste it into the first cell of the table on the page. Headers, thousands separators and units (“km”, “%”) are recognized, and a table where the months run along a row is turned so that the months become the labels.

It does not hold a number, so it is left off the chart. That happens with a range such as “12–15”, a word instead of a number or two numbers in one cell. Units and thousands separators are not errors: “3,650 km” reads as 3650.

Each percentage is rounded to one decimal place on its own — the same way a student rounds it when checking the math. Because of rounding the total is sometimes 99.9% or 100.1%, and that is not an error in the data. The degrees for drawing are handled differently: they always add up to exactly 360°.

With several series, Stacked puts the values on top of each other, so a column’s height is the sum and the total is written above it. 100% stretches every column to the same height and shows each series’ share inside the category — useful when the mix matters more than the size.