excel consultants - What is a pivot table

Hi Ann

Thanks for your question.

The idea behind a pivot table is to take information that is stored in a series of columns in Excel (a list) and turn it into a summarised table format.

The pivot table allows you to collate/summarise individual values that are stored in a column, by for example, summing them, averaging them, displaying percentages of totals and so on.

The major advantages of a pivot table are that you can rearrange the items you put into the table quickly and easily by dragging and dropping; and you can create a chart from it by clicking a button.

Tracy