#How to use pivot tables in excel 2011 how to#
#How to use pivot tables in excel 2011 download#

If you have a quantity column, make sure all the values are numbers (or blank) and not words.Īt this point, if everything is looking OK, you're ready to move on to the next step.

If you have a date column, make sure all the values in that column are dates (or blank).

What isn't OK is a whole row or a whole column of empty cells.

Note that empty cells within your table are OK.

If any data remains unselected, you need to check for empty columns or rows within the data table. This automatically selects the whole table.

A quick way to check if your data is ready to be used in a PivotTableis to click a single cell anywhere in the data table, then press SHIFT+* (or CTRL+SHIFT+8).

If it finds an empty row or column, it assumes your data stops at that point. Excel is good at sensing the start and end of a data table by looking for empty rows and columns. Make sure there are no empty columns or rows in your data. These headings will be used when you create the PivotTable, and things will get very confusing without headings. Your data should be organized in columns with headings. There are some important rules you need to follow if you want to create a PivotTable from your data: Getting started with PivotTables - make sure your data is ready That's where PivotTables are by far the best solution - you'll be able to convert this data in under a minute, and be able to get different summaries with a few clicks of the mouse. So while you might look at the data in the table above and think 'I could summarize that quickly by hand or with a few clever formulas', the likelihood is that it would all get too much - and would certainly take too long to do by hand.

#How to use pivot tables in excel 2011 download#

In fact, this spreadsheet extends down for 688 rows of sales data, for all of January and February ( you can download a copy of the spreadsheet here).

The data we'll work with in this example is an Excel table that has two months of daily sales data for a team of four sales people, broken down by product.

Change the layout of your PivotTable report to reflect different views on the same data.

Add fields from your data to your PivotTable layout so you can see that data in summary form.

Insert a PivotTable using that data into a new worksheet inside your workbook.

Set up your data in Excel so it is in a format that is compatible with creating a PivotTable.

This lesson takes you through the following steps to build an Excel Pivot Table'

#How to use pivot tables in excel 2011 how to#

This lesson will show you how to create a simple PivotTable in Excel to summarize a set of daily sales data for a team of several sales people. Not only that, but they also allow you to quickly change how your data is summarized with almost no effort at all. If you are finding yourself writing lots of formulas to summarize data in Excel (using functions such as SUMIF and COUNTIF) then PivotTables can save you a lot of time and work and give you insights into your data that are otherwise too hard to discover. Excel's PivotTable feature is an incredibly powerful tool that makes it easy to tabulate and summarize data in your spreadsheets, particularly if your data changes a lot.