Pivot Tables in Excel

[Digger]

OK, in a moment of stupidity my boss asks me to put together some information about some products I deal with. Or at least I'm supposed to deal with.

Anyway, part of his stupidity was asking me to use pivot tables to present the data. This would be ok except I don't know what these things are, nor how they work. I also rated my ability out of 5 with Excel in the job interview to be about 4 to 4.5. More fool me.

So, does anyone know what they are, how they work, and how in the name of sweet jesobel I can get them to fit the data I have?

I have a few columns - part number, quanitity, date and product description. And I need to present how much of it we are dealing with week to week over a 6 months period.

My standard approach to this would be to get the data, fiddle about with it, get the calculator out, and present a series of graphs. It seems the boss wants a series of graphs that he can dick around with using pivot tables. Or that's what he says he wants.

All help mcuh appreciated. I know this has nothing to do with diving, but I also know that you guys are generally fairly PC literate, and I post enough crap about diving to balance it out.

Oh, and all this has to be presented, along with a proposal for how much I want to charge for the work we're doing on it, in a few days time. Along with working frmo stupid o'clock in the morning, and there being a shortage of people who know what they're doing. How shit is that.

Oh, and my boss isn't around Monday or Tuesday, so I don't have anyone I can ask if I don't know what I'm doing

Digs.

[chrisch]

Data should be in a "database", with each column having a (different) header. You need a key data item or add a counter column depending on the data. After that you just use the data wizard (its one of the few nice wizards on XL)
You can summate the key data item or count it (again depending on what you are trying to show). Then select one or two of the variables to analyse and set one up as a row and another as column.
The pivot table should now generate (either on the sheet or a new worksheet - you chose on the wizard)
That's it. Your boss can dick about with it now. You can add variables hide them summate them do all sorts all in real time. Its the single best tool I have ever seen for data analysis and the best bit of MS software ever written in the history of time.
There used to be a good tutorial on XL but they seem to have gone for online stuff now.

Annoying - it would take about 500 words of posting to explain and I could show you in less time than I have wasted so far with this...

Dead easy and brilliant.

If you really can't get your head round it email it to me Monday and I'll set it up and email it back.

Chris

(PivotTable Tutorial)

[David G]

This any help:

Daily Dose of Excel » Blog Archive » Creating a Simple Pivot Table

David