Melinda Cooper's Blog

What Is a Pivot Table

The Pivot Tables tool is one of the most powerful yet intimidating features in Excel. Pivot tables allow you to quickly summarize and analyze large amounts of data in lists and tables in your spreadsheet by dragging and dropping columns to different rows, columns, or summary positions.

Creating neat, informative summaries out of huge lists of raw data is a common challenge, and while Excel gives you all the tools you need to create such summaries, the actual work of writing formulas, cutting and pasting information, and organizing your totals into a new table can be extremely tedious. Fortunately, Excel has a feature called pivot tables that can solve all these problems. Pivot tables quickly summarize long lists of data. By using a pivot table, you can calculate summary information without writing a single formula or copying a single cell. But the most notable feature of pivot tables is that you can arrange them dynamically. Pivot tables are a hidden gem in Excel. Many otherwise experienced spreadsheet fans avoid them because they seem too complicated at first glance. I have discovered that pivot tables are really just a convenient way to build intelligent, flexible summary tables, nothing more, and nothing less.

To read more on Pivot Tables and to see examples, please visit,
http://www.ozgrid.com/Excel/excel-pivot-tables.htm