Pivot Table Tricks

Pivot Tables are my favorite feature in Excel. There is nothing more powerful than turning 60,000 rows of transaction data into a summary report with 4 mouse clicks.

In the episode of Call for Help broadcast today, I show two cool features of pivot tables.

1) A common problem in Excel is how to get a unique list of values from a dataset. For example, a list of all the customers who purchased something in the last year. This task usually involves the incredibly complex Data - Filter - Advanced Filter. However, in newer versions of Excel, you can use a pivot table to quickly get a unique list. The show notes will show you how.

2) When you create a pivot table, the default is to add the numbers in the data area of the chart. However, if you are summarizing several products for 12 months, even that summary view is a sea of numbers that will drive many managers crazy. Hidden behind the Options button in the Pivot Table Field dialog is a powerful set of options that allow you to present the resulting table as a percentage of totals, percentage of row, percentage of column and more.

For complete details, visit http://www.mrexcel.com/tip099.shtml.