A Pivot Table is a powerful tool for exploring and analyzing information. A Pivot table helps you organize and manipulate the raw data in your spreadsheet, giving you insight into patterns or relationships that might not be obvious at first glance. Pivot tables also give you the power to view your data in a different context, without changing the original content or structure.

 

You can base a pivot table on data in your current workbook, or even external data from another source if you wish. With a pivot table, you can conveniently drag and drop columns of your data to different areas of the table, to examine relationships or trends that may not be obvious in a traditional Excel list or database.

 

You could build several separate tables to explore how columns from an Excel worksheet relate to each other, or you can use one pivot table to do the same thing. With a pivot table, you can alter the table design without cutting, copying, pasting, or adjusting formulas and cell references. (These tasks can be frustrating when dealing with a large volume of data). In short, pivot tables enable you to organize your data in meaningful ways, without doing a lot of tedious work. You could say that a pivot table is like several data tables rolled into one.

 

Ideally, source data for a pivot table should be structured like an Excel list or database. The source data should have a row of unique column headings distinguishing the data, and there should be no empty columns interspersed within the data. Also, blank rows in a source list or database can limit the usefulness of your pivot table.

 

The following image shows a block of contiguous data that is ideally suited for a pivot table.

 

 

Notice that there are no

Empty rows or columns, and that every column of data has a unique label.