How to Create a Pareto Chart Using Microsoft Excel

Jun 2, 2011

A Pareto chart is a very convenient media that is mostly used to decipher concerns and issues that relate to problems in any given portion of an institution. Not only will this visual representation be used to seek out problems, the causes, even the most contributing cause of the problem can be seen, thus making it a lot easier to be channeled and given appropriate action.

One among the best features of MS Excel is its user-enabling capability to create charts of varying types and sub-types. Even so, to create a Pareto Chart for any presentation purpose can be easily arrived upon.

Here is a guide on how to create a Pareto Chart in MS Excel:

1. Open a blank worksheet and enter the values for in three respective columns for: categories, percentage, and the cumulative percentage. Basically, your "Category" column would contain words, in most Pareto chart cases, incidences. The "Percentage" column would be derived from the percentage of the occurrence of the designated category, or incidence. The third column would contain the "Cumulative percentage" of each incidence. Getting MS Excel to do for the calculations of each of these items will be easily done for you.

2. Make sure that the "Category" column is arranged in a way that their corresponding values for the "Percentage" Column are in a descending order.

3. Highlight the whole range, in order for the entries to be selected and make a combination chart from there. A combination chart that goes best for the purpose should first be one with vertical column bars with two data sets. The first data series would be corresponding to the "Percentage" column, while the second data series would be for the "Cumulative Percentage" column.

4. Format the chart type for the second data series. To do this, you should click on any of the rectangles in the second data series, go over to the chart types and choose "Line Graph."

5. Once the combination chart had taken its form with column bars in left-to-right decreasing array, with a concave line graph reaching to the scale of 100, then you can now further the formatting by placing in titles and labels into your chart.

Source: http://goo.gl/6zGAM

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