Pivot tables are awesome. You can take a range of data, apply a little magic to it, then manipulate that data in so many ways to make analyzing and predicting much easier. It’s a great way to compare and manipulate data on the fly in a meaningful matter. They seem like these really difficult and esoteric things to create, and people who can use them well are very much valued. While a Pivot Table in Excel can seem quite complex, I want to let you in on a little secret:

The Basics of a Pivot Table are Easy

The first thing you need is a large range of data. For the purposes of this exercise, we have four friends who are competing for the first six months of 2017 to see who gets the highest step count (fitness-minded fellows that they are…) I’m not going to post the whole table, as 180 entries would just be eye-crossingly boring. And you know, that’s the point. But the source table is going to start something like this:

So, we have five columns – one for the date and one for each of the contestants. They record their step counts each day. But at the end of the contest, they want to analyze that data to see how they did not only by day, but by month or week.

Without Pivot Tables, this would be a royal pain. So, let’s make one.

To make a Pivot Table

1. Select any cell in a data rage that includes a heading for each column in the top row.
2. Activate the Insert tab.
3. In the Tables group, click the PivotTable button to open the Create PivotTable dialog box.
4. In the Table/Range box, verify that the range in the box is the range you want. By default, it will display the continuous range that has the selected cell in it, but you can also select the cells with the mouse, if you wish.
5. Select a location for the PivotTable. You can place the PivotTable in a new or existing worksheet. I almost always go with a new worksheet.
6. Click OK.

   

Add Pivot Table Fields

You can add fields to a PivotTable to specify the data you want to display. The Fields of the source data appear in the PivotTable Field List task pane.

To add field drag a relevant field from the top of the PivotTable Field List to one of the four areas at the bottom of the task pane. You can add more than one field to an area, and you don’t need to add all fields to the table.

This example was a fairly simple one, as the relevant headers were merely dates and the contestants’ names. I dragged the Date field to the Row box. I then dragged each of the contestants’ names to the Values box.

As of this writing, the current version of Excel does something pretty nifty and will automatically collapse the dates by month, using the sum of the values as the default.

See the plus signs beside each name? From here, you can click on the plus sign if you want to see the value for each date.

But let’s say you wanted to give this to someone who isn’t really very patient with learning how to manipulate Excel, but still needs to filter the data sometimes. What can you do to make this easy on the user?

Slicers in Pivot Tables

Slicers are just buttons that work as filters. To create a Slicer, go to the Pivot TablesTools|Analyze tab. In the Filter group, click on Insert Slicer.

I’ve chosen Months as the option here because the guys want to see how they do month by month as well as how well they’ve done in total.

When we click on each month, we will then display the data only for that month. The beauty here is that the source data is still safe. You can manipulate how the data is displayed in a Pivot Table, but the source data is always unchanged. You will notice also, that in a Pivot Table, the Grand Total always reflects the data that is being currently displayed – no extra formulas or functions to write. Just change on the fly to display what you need!

These are really just the basics of Pivot Tables. You can get a lot more complex with them, if you want to, and I urge you to play and explore. But these basics should be enough to help amaze your co-workers and excite your boss.

As always, if you have any questions, just comment and I’ll try to help you out.

Today we’re going to learn about some features of Excel and how they interact.

• Tables and how they’re named
• SUMIF

We’re going to do this with a little problem our hypothetical boss has given us. It’s the end of the first quarter. She would like to know how much each client has paid us for this quarter.

We’re going to get all of this information from a little ledger she sent us. She’s no Excel expert, but she’s meticulous about records. This means we have plenty to work with just from this little table.

This is just a ledger that records the date, the client, how we got the client, what work we did for the client, and how much we were paid.

The first thing we will do is turn this array into a table. This will make the rest of the calculations easier.

Tables in Excel

To turn an array into a table in Excel:

1. Select the range you would like to make a table. (For the purposes of this exercise, that’s going to be cells A1:E27)
2. On the Home tab in the Styles group, click on Format as Table.
3. Choose the table style you would like.
4. Make sure that in the Format as Table dialog box, the My table has headers checkbox is checked.
5. Click OK.

You have now formatted your array as a table. This is more than pretty formatting, however, but also means you have created an object with some specific functions.

Before we get to the problem our boss has asked us to solve, I want to do one more thing – name the table. If you are going to be using more than one table in a spreadsheet, and will be performing calculations from more than one table, it is a good idea to give each table a meaningful name. While we are not going to go quite that far in this exercise, it’s a good general habit.

To Name a Table in Excel:

1. Make sure a cell in the table is selected.
2. Look at the top of your screen at the different tabs for ribbons. The last one should be Design with a Table Tools as a label above it. Click on it.
3. On the Table Tools:Design ribbon in the Properties group, you will see a Table Name text box.
4. Type the name you want for your table and press <Enter> on your keyboard. (We’re calling this table “Ledger”)

Now that we have formatted the array as a table, we are going to look back at what our boss wants.

The first thing she wants is how much each client has paid. We will start by creating another little array. Then we will use the SUMIF function to add up how much each client has paid us. As we go through this, you will see why I prefer to do this as a table rather than just keeping the array as-is. For the purposes of this exercise, we’re presuming that we’ll be starting an array to the side of the Ledger table starting in cell G1. The formula we will use in cell H2 will be:

=SUMIF(Ledger[Client], G2, Ledger[Payment])

Let’s break this down, as it might look like gobbledygook at first.

The function we will use is SUMIF, so we start with =SUMIF.

The syntax for the Sumif function is:

=SUMIF(range, criteria, sumrange)

So, the range is the comparison. In this case, we want the function to look in the Client column of the Ledger table, which is written as Ledger[Client], with the table name and the column name in brackets right beside it.

Then we want to know the criteria for comparison. There are a couple of ways to do this. You could look for specific text by putting it in quotes. So, we could have written it as “Bene Gesserit” (You put quotes around text you’re searching for). Which begs the question, why did I use the cell reference G2 instead? Well, mostly because I am lazy. I want to be able to write this equation once, then use autofill to complete the rest of the array.

The last thing we want to know is where to look for the values for which we want a total. In this case it is in the Payment column of the Ledger table, so we use Ledger[Payment].

Pop quiz. If I did not set this up as a table, but left the array as-is, could I have used cell references instead?

My word, yes. In this particular example,

=SUMIF(Ledger[Client], G2, Ledger[Payment])

would become:

=SUMIF($B$2:$B$27, G2, $E$2:$E$27)

Notice that I made the cell references absolute? Again, lazy. I want to be able to write this formula once and copy down.

So, why would I not do it that way?

This is a personal choice thing, but I tend to try to give meaningful names to ranges of data I am manipulating so that I can think about what data I am trying to pull rather than being bogged down in making sure cell references match exactly. (Great at math, suck at arithmetic, what can I say?)

Tables are not the only way to do this. Stay tuned next week, where we’ll talk about Named Ranges and how to use them.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions you may have!