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So many Office customers ask about "pivot table" that we've gathered the best answers in this blog post. Most likely, you are looking for information about how to create a PivotTable report that can help summarize and analyze your data. Or you already have your data in a PivotTable report and are looking for information about how to pivot it.
Example of a PivotTable report
To follow a three-step process to insert a PivotTable report that is based on your worksheet data, look at Quick start: Create a PivotTable report.
To get the full scoop on PivotTables (and PivotCharts), or to create a PivotTable that is based on an external data source, you'll want to follow the instructions in Create or delete a PivotTable or PivotChart report instead.
Because PivotTables aren't easy to understand, the following video may be helpful.
Are you new to PivotTables? In that case, I really recommend that you start with this popular training course written by my colleague, Judi Hurlock, PivotTable I: Get started with PivotTable reports in Excel 2007. It definitely helped me when I got started.
If you use an earlier version of Excel, you may also enjoy this article Pivot, swivel, and roll by Crabby Office Lady, which provides an interesting overview of PivotTables, those flexible little contortionists of the data world!
Excel is the Office application to use for in-depth data analysis, but if you keep your data in an Access database, you can pivot it there as well. The article Create or delete a PivotTable or PivotChart report should help you get started.
After you create a PivotTable report, it makes sense that you'll want to pivot the data to view it from different angles. Unfortunately, to better match the actual functionality that "pivots" PivotTable data, we used a different article title for a while--we called it "Change the layout of a PivotTable report," which made it difficult to find when you were looking for information about pivoting data.
But now it's back as Pivot data in a PivotTable report--that should be easier to find when you search for it!
I hope this provides answers to your questions about pivot table. If there are other ideas out there, or if you have a great tip about using PivotTables, we'd love to hear from you!
--Frederique Klitgaard
Comments: (4) Collapse
Very nice and simple thanks so much!
I use pivot tables regularly, is there a way to select the default settings data/values to be formatted a specific way? For example; I always want my data to sum (not count) and I always want my values to be numbers (1,234) with no decimal places.
I find it rather cumbersome to have to make the necessary changes on several columns of data.
I love pivot tables and, in most ways, they're the perfect reporting tool. There's just one feature that would complete them and save our users form having to go outside the pivot to answer some simple business questions.
Imagine a typical revenue report with customer info, product info, revenue etc. Try to answer the question "How many customers bought something in November?" or "How many products did I sell in November". These questions revolve around distinct customers and products as the same customer may have many purchases and the same product gets sold many times. These questions cannot be answered in a pivot. Yes, I can drill down and filter on unique records only. Or put the field in the row area and count the rows it takes up but these are both awkward and not in keeping with the beauty of a pivot table.
I'd like to see, and can't imagine this would be hard to develop, a "CountDistinct" choice added to the Sum, Count, Average etc. choices.
This is not the first time I've asked for this but I figure maybe there are new people listening.
Thanks,
Tom
There are two pivot table capabilities I wish Microsoft would incorporate in the next release of Excel: the ability to display subtotals for calculated fields, and the ability to display “grand” subtotals for inner row labels (i.e., fields) below the Grand Total row.