What Information Is Buried in Your Data?

Your company probably keeps a separate record describing each order processed. Scanning the list shows hundreds of orders just for the products you are responsible for tracking. You want a fast way to see how much each representative has sold of each product.

Guidelines: Setting Up Data for a PivotTable

Label your columns   PivotTables use your column labels to cross-tabulate your data. For example, you can summarize orders by product or by sales representative.

Use one worksheet row for each record   A PivotTable summarizes data stored in rows.

Make sure any dates are in date format   Select any column with dates, and click Cells (Format menu). On the Number tab, click the Date category, and then select the date type you want.

If a column contains repeating information, spell each entry the same way each time   Entries that are the same, such as entries for seafood or meat in a product column, can be grouped together automatically in the PivotTable.

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