How to Make a Pivot Table.

Posted on September 14, 2008
Filed Under Excel Tips & Tricks

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This week we have whole bunch of Excel Tips and Tricks and most of them are about Creating, Working and Analyzing Excel Pivot Tables.

But before we dive into the Excel tutorials we first need to be clear what Pivot Tables exactly are.

A Pivot Table lets you display the data contained in a column of an Excel list (database) by means of subtotals (or other calculations) that are defined by another column in the same list. The other calculations might be averages, counts, percentages, standard deviations, and so on.

If you want more info and you want to know exactly what a Pivot table is; Wikipedia has a great explanation.

What are the possibilities of a Pivot Table.

Here’s an example of a simple table.

How-make-pivot-table-pic1

If you now click on the downwards arrow you can see all sorts of options and tools to work with.

How-make-pivot-table-pic2

Normally you use Pivot Tables for bigger databases instead of 3 rows but you can understand that the possibilities are endless.

How to make a Pivot Table.

If you want to make a Pivot table you’ll first need to enter your main field names.

How-make-pivot-table-pic3

Select the entered data
Go to the Insert Tab
And click on the Table Icon (or simply click CTRL+T)
Don’t forget to check the option “My table has headers” in the dialog box.
Click OK and the first step is set.

How-make-pivot-table-pic4

Now you have to enter all the data that you want and you can start working with your Pivot Table.

How-make-pivot-table-pic5

Later this week in the following Excel tutorials we’ll show you more tools and options for working with Pivot Tables. Now you know how to make a Pivot Table and the following step is to use them in your advantage.

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