Excel

What’s so great about

PivotTable reports?
 Course contents

• Overview: More data than you can handle?

• Lesson 1: Make your data work for you

• Lesson 2: Create a PivotTable report

What’s so great about PivotTable reports?

Overview: More data than you can handle?

If you want to see at a glance the

trends, patterns, and meaning behind
your data, then PivotTable reports are
for you.

In this short course you'll learn how

PivotTable reports can summarize,
analyze, and organize your worksheet
data into new and meaningful views.
Then you’ll see how to make a
PivotTable report.

What’s so great about PivotTable reports?

 Course goals

• See why the PivotTable feature is so useful.

• Make sense out of data by creating a PivotTable report.

What’s so great about PivotTable reports?

 Lesson 1

Make your data work for you

Make your data work for you

Imagine an Excel worksheet of

company sales figures with
thousands of rows of data.
Everyone has questions about what
the data means. How do you get
answers quickly and easily?

PivotTable reports summarize and

More data than you organize data into different views
know what to do with that present comparisons, reveal
patterns and relationships, and
analyze trends. Let’s find out how
PivotTable reports make it so easy.
What’s so great about PivotTable reports?
 Ask the questions you choose

With a PivotTable report, you decide

what data you want analyzed, and
how to organize it.

Instead of a single arbitrary form

that doesn’t really suit your needs,
each PivotTable report gives you a
different view of your data that is
Get data under control: customized to your purposes and
determine what you answers your questions on the spot.
want to know.

What’s so great about PivotTable reports?

 Ask the questions you choose

To compare facts and find their

meanings, begin by asking
questions. Once you have your
questions in mind, Excel makes it
easy to get answers.
First, it brings you a wizard to
prepare the data for a new view.
Next, it lets you drag the data from
Get data under control:
your sales-figure list into a new
determine what you
want to know. PivotTable report view.

What’s so great about PivotTable reports?

 Get the answers you want

Creating a PivotTable report is about

moving pieces of information around
to see how they fit together.

Not satisfied with the first report? It

just takes a couple of seconds to
pivot rows and columns into a
different arrangement, a bit like
Answer different turning a kaleidoscope to see
questions with different different patterns.
PivotTable reports.

What’s so great about PivotTable reports?

 Get the answers you want

PivotTable reports do so much to

make data manageable, it’s enough
to make your head spin. But you
don’t have to worry about arranging
a report in the “wrong” way.

You can move the data around again

and again, to get as many clear
answers as you have questions.
Answer different
questions with different
PivotTable reports.

What’s so great about PivotTable reports?

 Lesson 2

Create a PivotTable report

Create a PivotTable report

In this lesson, you’ll meet the

wizard. (Don’t bother about what’s
going on behind the curtain.) You’ll
learn how to:

1. Ask questions.
2. Use the PivotTable Wizard.
Creating a PivotTable 3. Create the PivotTable report.
report

What’s so great about PivotTable reports?

 Determine what you need to know

Imagine that Excel is open and

you’re looking at sales figures: 799
rows of sales listed by country,
salesperson, and order amount.

How can you make the data more

understandable?

Sales figures that go on

and on

What’s so great about PivotTable reports?

 Determine what you need to know

To find out, start by asking yourself

what you need to know:

• How much has each salesperson

sold?
• What are the sales amounts by
country?

Sales figures that go on

and on

What’s so great about PivotTable reports?

 Determine what you need to know

When you’re ready to get the

answers, do the following:
1. Click anywhere in the data.
2. Start the wizard by clicking
PivotTable and PivotChart
Report on the Data menu.

Sales figures that go on

and on

What’s so great about PivotTable reports?

 Meet the wizard

Once the wizard is opened, click

Finish. The wizard will use its
default settings, which means it will:

• Use data in an Excel list or in a

database.
• Prepare a layout area for
The PivotTable and
creating a PivotTable report.
PivotChart Wizard
• Use all the data on the list.
• Place the report layout area on a
new worksheet.

What’s so great about PivotTable reports?

 The wizard reveals all

The wizard takes less than a second

to prepare a new worksheet with
everything you need to create a
PivotTable view of your data,
including:
1. The PivotTable Field List to
drag items from.
The new worksheet, 2. The PivotTable layout area to drag
ready for a PivotTable items onto.
report

What’s so great about PivotTable reports?

 The list to drag items from

In the PivotTable Field List are

the names of the columns from the
source data (the sales figures):
Country, Salesperson, Order
Amount, Order Date, and OrderID.

1. Each column heading in the

worksheet…
Column headings 2. …has become a field with the
become fields.
same name.

What’s so great about PivotTable reports?

 The layout area to drop items onto

The layout area is divided into

separate outlined drop areas onto
which you drag fields from the field
list. The layout area will become
your PivotTable report.

Labels in the drop areas tell you

where to drop data to display it in a
specific orientation.
Use drop areas to control
the report organization.

What’s so great about PivotTable reports?

 The layout area to drop items onto

For example, if you were to drag the

Salesperson field into the area
labeled Drop Row Fields Here,
you’d see one row for each
salesperson’s name.

If you dragged the Salesperson

field into the area labeled Drop
Use drop areas to control
Column Fields Here, you’d see
the report organization. one column for each salesperson’s
name.

What’s so great about PivotTable reports?

Create the PivotTable report view of your data

Now it’s time to put the pieces

together. Say that your first question
is, “How much has each salesperson
sold?”

To find out the answer, you use two

of the fields in the field list: the
Salesperson field to display the
names of the salespeople, and the
Creating the PivotTable
report view Order Amount field to display the
amount that each person sold.

What’s so great about PivotTable reports?

Create the PivotTable report view of your data

After deciding which fields to use,

decide where to drop each field:
1. Drag the Salesperson field onto
the layout area labeled Drop
Row Fields Here. The names
show up on one row apiece.
2. Then drag the Order Amount
Creating the PivotTable field to the Drop Data Items
report view Here layout area to see the sales
amount for each salesperson.

What’s so great about PivotTable reports?

Create the PivotTable report view of your data

The totals then appear in your

PivotTable report.

When you drop the Order Amount

field into the data drop area, the
colored outline disappears, and you
see the report view.

Creating the PivotTable

report view

What’s so great about PivotTable reports?

 Voilà!

There you have it! The PivotTable

report summarizes 799 rows of
information so that you can see at a
glance how much each person sold.

You can use the information any

way you want: Show the report to
others, copy it into a Word
document, or publish it to a Web
The PivotTable report
page.

What’s so great about PivotTable reports?

 Voilà!

To get the answers to other

questions as quickly and easily, you
could drag other field items into the
layout.
Or to display different relationships,
you could sort or pivot your data
with different fields in the columns
or rows simply by dragging field
The PivotTable report
items from one drop area to the
other.

What’s so great about PivotTable reports?

 Suggestions for practice

1. Open exercise 1.
2. Create the report view.
3. Lay out the report.
4. Pivot the report.
5. Create page views.
6. Drag fields off the report.

What’s so great about PivotTable reports?