Excel’s automatic outlining feature makes outlining a worksheet fairly straightforward. Automatic outlining works best with numerical data organised into groups and sub groups by formulas or functions. The following worksheet, for example, contains monthly financial data for a business, organised into quarterly and yearly totals using formulas and the SUM function.

 

 

 

It can be difficult to discern quarterly and yearly totals at a glance, because these figures are lost in amongst the other data.

 

To automatically outline this worksheet, choose Data->Group and Outline->Auto Outline from the menu bar. If you perform this action, Excel 2003 will construct an outline based on the numerical categories (formula totals) available in your worksheet.

 

 

 

Figure1

 

Here you can see the results of Excel’s automatic outline. All of the original data is shown, as well as outline grouping indicators, and collapse buttons marked with a (-). You can see that the quarters (sets of three months) are grouped together to be summarized by Quarterly totals, and that each year has been grouped to be summarized by Yearly Totals. Notice also, that the columns Supplies, Wages, and Rent have been grouped under Total Expenses, and that there is an overarching group of all columns under Profit.

 

Here you can see the summary results of Excel’s automatic outline. The original information is still available in all of its detail, but it is now presented in a summary view, showing only the yearly profit totals. Of course, automatic outlines will differ from worksheet to worksheet depending on the way the data is organized. To remove the outlining from your worksheet chose Data->Group and Outline-> Clear Outline from the menu bar.