Microsoft
Excel is a powerful and popular program for organizing and analyzing data. One of
its most powerful capabilities is PivotTables, which enable you to pull
meaningful information from huge masses of seemingly meaningless data. The name
PivotTable comes from one of the most powerful features of Excel—the ability to
quickly and easily “pivot” the
data to view them in different
ways. Given all their power, PivotTables (and the related PivotCharts) are
necessarily somewhat complex. You can’t get something for nothing, after all,
and in order to make the most of these powerful tools you need a good
understanding of what they are and how they work. That’s where this book comes
in. Excel PivotTables and Charts covers the topic from A to Z, starting with
the basics and moving on to the most advanced and sophisticated aspects of
PivotTables. The book uses a lot of illustrations and real-world examples to
make it easier for you to relate the information to your own work.
This book does not assume that
the reader has any prior experience with PivotTables. It starts at square one
and moves on from there. However, even those who do have previous PivotTable
experience may well find the book useful for dealing with the more arcane aspects
of PivotTables or with the many changes that are present in the latest version
of Excel. The book is written specifically for Excel 2007.
The book is divided into
chapters, with each chapter providing a number of sections that cover some
specific aspect of PivotTables or PivotCharts.
- · Chapter 1 explains the principles behind PivotTables and shows you the steps required to create a simple PivotTable and chart from your worksheet data.
- · Chapter 2 explains the various data sources that you use to create a PivotTable.
- · Chapters 3–5 get into the nitty-gritty details of PivotTables including formatting, filtering, grouping, and custom calculations.
- · Chapter 6 is devoted to creating PivotCharts from the data in your PivotTables.
- · Chapter 7 explores the advanced topic of using PivotCharts with multidimensional data.
- · Chapter 8 shows you how to extract hard data from a PivotTable for further analysis in your worksheet.
- · Chapter 9 explores some other Excel analysis methods, such as subtotals and database functions, that may be preferable to PivotTables for some data analysis needs.
- · Chapter 10 covers the use of the VBA programming language to create and manipulate PivotTables.
The book includes three
appendixes:
- · Appendix A discusses troubleshooting some common PivotTable problems.
- · Appendix B details the PivotTable-related differences between Excel 2007 and the previous version of Excel.
- · Appendix C provides a primer of Excel charts for those who need to brush up their knowledge.
