Microsoft Office Tips Pivot tables

Agenda Learn how to create and use PivotTables Q&A Excel 2010 is very similar to 2007, I have tried to demonstrate how 2003 differs.

Pivot Tables A pivot table is a special Excel tool that allows you to summarize and explore data interactively It can help you find trends or relationships you might not spot in huge sheets of data.

Possible uses Any situation where cross tabulation would be useful. Example: Sorting salaries by account and across analysis code. Sum of AmountAnalysis AccountP0001P0002P0003P0004P0012P0018P0020Grand Total R R R R R R R R R Grand Total

Step 1 Open the worksheet that contains the table you want summarized by pivot table and select any cell in the table. Ensure that the table has no blank rows or columns and that each column has a header. Make sure you are just selecting one cell.

Step 2 Click the PivotTable button in the Tables group on the Insert tab. This is found on the insert ribbon on Excel 2010 In Excel 2003 this is found in the data menu Keyboard shortcut is Alt NVT

Step 3 Adjust the range or the source This button here will allow you to drag and select an area Its much easier to create the pivot table on a new worksheet. In excel 2003 the same information is separated over 3 steps

Step 4 Excel now creates a blank placeholder for your pivot table You now need to tell excel how you would like the pivot table to display the data. Excel will populate a Pivot Table field list on the right hand side (this is often a floating box in excel 2003) A field is the same as a database record and is called a cell in Excel

Step 5 First, decide what data you want to summarise, this would often be amount. Drag the field you will to use to the Values field. By default this should be a sum if there is no blanks in your data. You can’t make a mistake, just keep moving the fields around until you are happy!

Step 6 Add your column and row labels the same way: Click and drag where you would like the fields to appear in your PivotTable You can have multiple fields in each section.

Finished Table You PivotTable should now have automatically generated on the left Its as easy as that!

Formatting There are several options for the value field (that’s the main one in the middle) You can change the function – its usually sum by default but you can use count or a range of other functions. Left click the field to bring up the menu

Formatting In the PivotTable Tool ribbon you can customise your pivot table. Change report layout to tabular. You can pick from a selection of designs. Ribbons are what excel calls their top menus

Using your pivot table Once you have created your pivot table you can use it to extract data. You can double click a value in your pivot table to get excel to generate a new worksheet that shows all the records that make up that value. You can add a filter to your pivot table to enable you to further sort the results. There is a prettier way to do this using a slicer. Ctrl click on the slicer to select multiple selections. A slicer is just a fancy filter!

Any questions?