How to Organize My Source Data for Pivot Tables and Stacked Area Chart

[Mr. Snrub]

I am looking through the article here: How to Structure Source Data for a Pivot Table & Unpivot, and it says that in order to prepare your data for pivot tables you should organize your data such that all values of the same type should be in one column.

However, I also want to be able to create a stacked area chart with my data.

Suppose I have the following sample data:

<table>
<tr>
<th>Year</th>
<th>Bears</th>
<th>Dolphins</th>
<th>Whales</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2017</td>
<td>8</td>
<td>150</td>
<td>80</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2018</td>
<td>54</td>
<td>77</td>
<td>54</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2019</td>
<td>93</td>
<td>32</td>
<td>100</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2020</td>
<td>116</td>
<td>11</td>
<td>76</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2021</td>
<td>137</td>
<td>6</td>
<td>93</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2022</td>
<td>184</td>
<td>1</td>
<td>72</td>
</tr>
</table>

This data is perfect for creating a stacked area chart, with the three series being Bears, Dolphins, and Whales. But if I convert it to a pivot table-appropriate table (with three columns "Year", "Animal Name" and "Quantity") is there still an easy way to create a stacked area chart from this layout?

 

[Fazza]

Pretty easy is to press F11 from within the pivot table, and then right click from within the chart to change to a stacked area chart. OK?