Create a Speedometer Chart in Excel

Speedometer charts are used to measure performance. As a speedometer can be found on any car dashboard they are instantly recognisable, and will add a certain style to your Excel dashboards.

Excel does not provide one as a default chart type, so to create a speedometer chart in Excel we will need a donut chart, a pie chart and a little ingenuity.

The Donut chart will be used for the speedometer background and the Pie chart will be positioned on top to create the needle.

Being a big fan of the UFC, I thought I would create a speedometer chart to display the percentage of victories by UFC Welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre that have come via by stoppage (submission, KO or TKO).

Enter the Data

The first task at hand is to enter the data that we want to use for our chart. This data is displayed below with formulas shown.

Create a Donut Chart

1.      Select cells A2:A5.

2.      Click the Insert tab on the Ribbon. Click the Other Charts button and select the first Donut from the list.

3.      Right mouse click on the donut and select Format Data Series. Enter 90 degrees as the angle of first slice. This will position the 180 degree side of the donut at the bottom.

4.      Remove the Legend on the right by selecting it and pressing Delete

5.      Make the bottom half of the donut disappear. Click on the bottom slice twice to select only that slice. Then right mouse click and select Format Data Point. Select Fill and then the No fill option.

6.      Change the colour of the other 3 slices if you wish. The finished donut below has been formatted to red, yellow and green slices. To do this follow the steps as before but choose a Solid fill for your colour.

Create a Pie Chart

The pie chart will be created to form the needle of the speedometer chart.

1.      Select cells B2:B5.

2.      Click the Insert tab on the Ribbon. Click Pie and select the first chart in the list.

3.      As before, right mouse click on the pie chart and select Format Data Series. Change the angle of the first slice to 90 degrees. Again this will position the 180 degree slice at the bottom.

4.      Remove the legend from the chart.

5.      Make all the pie slices except for the needle transparent. Do this by right clicking on the slice and selecting Format Data Point. Select Fill and then No fill.

6.      Repeat this for the Chart Area. This will make the chart background transparent. The needle should be correctly positioned on top of the donut.

Add Text Boxes for Labels

The labels on the chart were created by inserting text boxes.

1.      Click the Insert tab on the Ribbon and then the Text Box button.

2.      Click where you would like to position the label.

3.      Enter the required text and then format as necessary.

To save time in the future, you can save the 2 charts as chart templates. Next time you need a speedometer chart, the task would be as easy as selecting the data and inserting both charts (Find out more on how to use chart templates).

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