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. 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. Not only that, but they also allow you to quickly change how your data is summarized with almost no effort at all. 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. This lesson shows you how to create a PivotTable in Excel 2016 (both Mac and Windows versions), Excel 2013, Excel 2010 and Excel 2011 (Mac). What you'll learn in this lesson In this tutorial, you'll learn how to:.
Set up your data in Excel so it is in a format that you can use for a PivotTable. Create a PivotTable with that data. Change the PivotTable report to reflect different views on the same data. 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. The first few rows are shown below: In fact, this spreadsheet extends down for 688 rows of sales data, for all of January and February.
Laminated quick reference card showing step-by-step instructions and shortcuts for charts (graphs), sparklines, tables and PivotTables features of Microsoft Excel 2016 for Mac.
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. 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.
Getting started with PivotTables - make sure your data is ready There are some important rules you need to follow if you want to create a PivotTable from your data:. Your data should be organized in columns with headings. These headings will be used when you create the PivotTable, and things will get very confusing without headings. Make sure there are no empty columns or rows in your data. Excel is good at sensing the start and end of a data table by looking for empty rows and columns. If it finds an empty row or column, it assumes your data stops at that point.
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). This automatically selects the whole table. If any data remains unselected, you need to check for empty columns or rows within the data table. Note that empty cells within your table are OK. What isn't OK is a whole row or a whole column of empty cells. Consistent data in all cells.
If you have a date column, make sure all the values in that column are dates (or blank). If you have a quantity column, make sure all the values are numbers (or blank) and not words.
At this point, if everything is looking OK, you're ready to move on to the next step. Create a blank PivotTable To start your PivotTable, follow these steps:. Click on a cell in the data table. Any cell will do, provided your data meets the rules outlined above. In fact, at this point it's all or nothing - select the whole table or just one cell in the table. Don't select a few cells, because Excel may think you are trying to create a PivotTable from just those cells.
Click on the Insert menu and click the PivotTable button:. This button looks like this in Excel 2007 and 2010 for Windows:. The button looks like this in Excel 2013 and 2016 (both Windows and Mac versions of Excel 2016).
Note the new feature to see Recommended PivotTables. This is the fastest way to create a PivotTable. However, we'll choose the PivotTable button for now so you can learn how to build a PivotTable from scratch:. If you're using Excel 2011 for Mac, you can choose PivotTable.
From the Data menu (although we think Excel 2016 for Mac is well worth the upgrade. It's faster, and is almost identical to Excel 2016 for Windows). The following dialog box will appear. This is the same on all versions of Excel from Excel 2007 right through to Excel 2016:. Note that the Table/Range value will automatically reflect the data in your table (you can click in the field to change the Table/Range value if Excel guessed wrong).
Alternatively, you can choose an external data source such as a database (we'll cover that another day!). Also notice that you can choose where the new PivotTable should go. By default, Excel will suggest a New Worksheet, which I think is the best choice unless you already know you want it on an existing worksheet. Be warned that if your data changes a lot, or you find yourself changing the PivotTable layout, then refreshing the data in your PivotTable can result in the PivotTable changing shape and covering a larger area. If you have data or formulas in that area, they'll disappear. Therefore, putting a PivotTable on the same page as your data or other information can cause you real headaches later on, which is why I recommend New Worksheet as the preferred option. Once you've completed your selections, click OK. Assuming you chose the New Worksheet option, Excel will create a new worksheet in the current workbook, and place the blank PivotTable in the worksheet for you.
You are now ready to design your PivotTable. Designing your PivotTable layout. When you switch to the worksheet with your new PivotTable, you'll notice three separate elements of the PivotTable on the screen, starting with the PivotTable report itself. The presentation of this screen will be different if you are using Excel 2007 or Excel 2011 for Mac, but this shouldn't make any difference to the next steps in this lesson. Then you'll see the PivotTable Field List (or PivotTable Builder on Excel for Mac) and under that the field layout area (I've shown them side by side here).
Note that it should show the column headings from your data table. If not, you may need to check that your whole data table was selected. Here's a quick tip - if you click on any cell in your spreadsheet that is outside the PivotTable, the PivotTable Field List will disappear. You can make it reappear simply by clicking inside the PivotTable report again. To create the layout of your PivotTable, you first select the fields you want in your table, and then place them in the correct location in the field layout area. I recommend you drag and drop each field to the area you want it to be. The alternative is to check the boxes for the fields you want to include, and let Excel guess where to put them.
However, Excel sometimes guesses wrong, so manual selection is likely to be faster. As an example, here are the Field List and the Field Layout area above with the fields in place to show a report with:.
![Pivot Table Excel For Mac Cheat Sheet Pivot Table Excel For Mac Cheat Sheet](/uploads/1/2/5/5/125580740/978862606.gif)
Each day down the left, with each sales person listed separately for each day. Items shown across the top.
The total quantity of items sold for each row in the PivotTable. Here is how to define the layout this report:. The PivotTable report that is generated from these selections looks like this:.
At this point, the PivotTable has created a table that shows the number of each product sold by each sales person on each day. Changing your PivotTable So far, we've seen how quickly a PivotTable can create a report that would have taken hours to produce by hand. Now, let's try changing the PivotTable to show the report another way, i.e.
Show Products down the side, and Sales people across the top. Click inside your PivotTable report (i.e. The report shown above).
The PivotTable Field List should reappear. Change the layout of your PivotTable to look like this:. When you make this change, you'll see your PivotTable change instantly to reflect the new layout (unless you chose Defer Layout Update - this feature is useful if you have a lot of data, and changing the layout of your PivotTable takes a long time to recalculate) The speed with which you were able to make this change demonstrates the real power of PivotTables - the ability they give you to tabulate data quickly, and then rearrange your data into different reports amost instantaneously. Hopefully this lesson has got you started with PivotTables. You might also like to try which provides a comprehensive guide to PivotTables and how to use them.
If you have any questions or comments about this lesson, or specific scenarios you need help with, you can either leave a comment using the form below, for more lessons,. We welcome your comments and questions about this lesson. We don't welcome spam. Our readers get a lot of value out of the comments and answers on our lessons and spam hurts that experience.
Our spam filter is pretty good at stopping bots from posting spam, and our admins are quick to delete spam that does get through. We know that bots don't read messages like this, but there are people out there who manually post spam. I repeat - we delete all spam, and if we see repeated posts from a given IP address, we'll block the IP address.
So don't waste your time, or ours. Hey, great article. I have referred several of my colleagues to this as a starting point. As the pivot table functionality has been improved so much since the old days (Excel 2003) the basic usage of it is really a prerequisite to use the 'newer' tools like PowerPivot (which is so amazing as it drastically reduces time flattening your data as preparation for pivots). Some of my colleagues stated that it took them a little longer than 5 minutes, but 10 or even 15 minutes of course is still fine for a topic with that complexity. Hi Vaibhav Your data is structured perfectly for what you're trying to do with a PivotTable.
Click on a cell anywhere inside your data table. Follow the steps above to create your PivotTable.
Add the Name of Creditor field to the Row Labels area. Add each of the columns you want to analyse to the Values area (Gross Total, Oms Purchases etc).
![Cheat Cheat](/uploads/1/2/5/5/125580740/142614919.png)
If the PivotTable gives you the Count of any of these columns, then click each field and choose Sum in the Summarize value field by section. That should give you what you are looking for. David. Submitted by Prabhu on Mon, - 16:40. Very good tutorial.
I've successfully avoided the use of Pivot Tables, perferring to create tables on my own using the various formulae Excel provides, for well over a decade. Now I find my machine grinding to a halt when working with data blocks of about 65,000 rows and about a dozen columns. I've limited cell references (e.g., COUNTIF(A1:A65000,F2) rather than (COUNTIF (A:A,F2)),eliminated references across workbooks and even consolidated data on worksheets to limit cross-sheet references, but STILL it is taking eternities to process or freezing altogether, even when I move my work to more powerful work stations.
I'm afraid to ask, but might Pivot Tables provide a solution or does a Pivot Table, say, counting 65,000 rows take just as much horsepower as a 65,000-row COUNTIF / COUNTIFS statement? I'm not sure I'd describe 'avoiding' PivotTables as success. If you spend the time to dig into the functionality they offer, I have no doubt you'll find yourself wondering why you put it off so long - and your performance issues will disappear, or will at least become much less of a problem. Bear in mind that COUNTIF and COUNTIFS have a lot of heavy lifting to do (as does any function with IF in its name). PivotTables work by taking a copy of your data and storing them in more efficient format than standard Excel rows and columns. This is known as the pivot cache. All changes you make to the table are applied to the data in the pivot cache rather than the raw data, and happen very quickly compared to what you're seeing when your spreadsheet recalculates.
As new data is added to the source data, you can then manually refresh the pivot cache which in turn updates the PivotTable (in fact, you'll simply be 'refreshing the data' - you won't see any references in Excel to 'refreshing the pivot cache' or even any references to the pivot cache - that all happens behind the scenes). Not only that, but Excel 2013 will automatically use the same pivot cache for each PivotTable you create in that spreadsheet file. This means you can have multiple worksheets with multiple PivotTables, all using the same source data, which makes PivotTables considerably more efficient than creating multiple worksheets with different reports that each references and calculates from the sheet containing the raw data. If you're using earlier versions of Excel you have the option when creating a new PivotTable from the same source data to re-use the pivot cache by selecting 'Yes' when asked if you want use less memory with your new PivotTable. After all this, you might also like to consider PowerPivot, which was a free downloadable extension in Excel 2010 but is now a standard feature in Excel 2013.
It's basically PivotTables on steroids - check out the videos on this page: I hope that helps. Feel free to post again if you need help to get your PivotTables beyond the basics covered in this lesson. Regards David. Submitted by MURALI on Sat, - 16:36. Hi, Is there a way we can compare 2 pivot tables with similar information to spit out the difference betwen the two? The source of obtaining the data for both is different. Example I have timesheets and have created a pivot table listing name, positions and days worked I now want to compare that with what actually gets paid by payroll.
My issue is that being a large company personnel move from one cost centre to another filling in roles and sometimes payroll forget to change the cost centre thus creating the difference. Can you please suggest a way to compare the two?
Thanks. Submitted by Sarah on Fri, - 04:43.