Your first pivot table

A pivot table summarizes a big table by dragging and dropping, no formulas. Fifty orders become revenue by region by product in about ten seconds.

1. Click anywhere in your data. Make sure it has one header row and no blank rows.
2. Insert › Pivot table, choose New sheet, and click Create.
3. In the editor on the right, add a field to Rows (Region), and one to Values (Amount, summarized by SUM).
4. Add a second field to Columns (Product) for a cross-tab.

Useful settings once it's built:

• Summarize by switches SUM to COUNT, AVERAGE, MAX and more.
• Show as › % of grand total turns dollars into shares.
• Filters limits the whole table, say to last quarter.
• Right-click a date in Rows and choose Create pivot date group to roll days up into months.

Pivot tables are perfect for exploring. For a report that other people read every week, the formulas you've learned (SUMIFS, UNIQUE, and QUERY in Level 3) are easier to style and won't shift around when the data changes shape.