Hi Danielle

Insert a row at the head of your data and call it Nationality.
Mark the whole block of data and select Data=Pivot Table and finish
Drag the field Nationality to the Row Area and also to the Data Area
selecting Count of Nationality.
Slect Pivot Chart and the data will be expressed as a pie chart as you
require.

For more detailed instructions on setting up Pivot Tables and Charts take a
look at the examples at Debra Dalgleish's site
http://www.contextures.com/tiptech.html and in particular follow the link to
http://peltiertech.com/Excel/Pivots/pivotstart.htm

--
Regards
Roger Govier
"danielle" wrote in message
...
I'm trying to make a pie chart using words as the information to compute
rather than numbers - is this possible to do? like for example if i wanted
to
calculate the percentage of french students, spanish students, and english
students in a class of 30, and i set up my column like this:

STUDENT'S NATIONALITY
french
french
english
spanish
english
spanish
spanish
spanish
french
.....

would it be possible to have excel make a pie chart that shows the
proportion of french to english to spanish students in the class? or do i
have
to set up my information differently?

-danielle