

Here are the steps to create a pivot table using the data shown above: Let’s go ahead and create a Pivot Table using the data set (shown above). Hopefully, now you have an idea of why Pivot Tables are so awesome. It’s so simple, you may as well take a few minutes and show your boss how to do it himself. Within seconds, a Pivot Table will answer all these questions (as you’ll learn below).īut the real benefit is that it can accommodate your finicky data-driven boss by answering his questions immediately. This is where Excel Pivot Tables comes in really handy. You’ll have to go back to the data and create new formulas every time there is a change. You can go ahead and use Excel functions to give you the answers to these questions, but what if suddenly your boss comes up with a list of five more questions. How did The Home Depot’s performance compare against other retailers in the South?.What are the top five retailers by sales?.What were the total sales in the South region in 2016?.Now your boss may want to know a few things from this data: It has the sales data by region, retailer type, and customer. This is sales data that consists of ~1000 rows. Suppose you have a dataset as shown below: It’s as easy as dragging and dropping rows/columns headers to create reports. What is a Pivot Table and Why Should You Care?Ī Pivot Table is a tool in Microsoft Excel that allows you to quickly summarize huge datasets (with a few clicks).Įven if you’re absolutely new to the world of Excel, you can easily use a Pivot Table.

The Nuts & Bolts of an Excel Pivot TableĬlick hereto download the sample data and follow along.What is a Pivot Table and Why Should You Care?.
