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How to Create Pivot Tables in Excel
– Rebekah Hedge
*Comment from Katie: You will need to read all of the words. Don’t do what I did and try to just go by the pictures!
Pivot tables are a tool that exist within Excel that allow you to sort large data sets in order to summarize the information within them. To begin you will need a data set like the one seen below.
Next, click on the insert tab at the top of your excel bar. Once on that tab, click into your data set (any cell) and then choose pivot table in the upper left hand side of your screen.
If you have clicked into your data set as previously stated, the pivot table settings box will auto populate the cell range for your data set – you will still want to verify that this is the correct range. Below the range, you can choose to filter your data on a New Worksheet or on an existing worksheet. For the sake of cleanliness I recommend that you choose a new worksheet.
Once you have created the table, this control bar will appear on the right hand side of your screen. Your fields will include the column names that you have on your data set. In order to use these fields to manipulate your data, you will need to drag and drop your fields in the bottom areas.
By dragging the birthday month field down to the rows area, you will create a row for each birth month that was used in the original data set. By then pulling Birthday Month down to the values area, you will give a count of how many of each birth months occur within the original set of data.
Below is an image of the output of data when the given parameters are chosen.
Additionally, more parameters can be added to sort the data even further. By pulling down the Favorite Colors field into the rows area, you will split the existing birth month clients into their favorite color as well.
This is a display of the output of data once the additional parameter has been added. Other additional parameters can be added and removed to sort in any way that is desired.
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