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CA202Spreadsheet Application

Creating Dynamic Listswith PivotTables

Lecture # 9

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Objectives

✔ Create dynamic data lists with PivotTables.

✔ Edit PivotTables.

✔ Create PivotTables from external data.

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Pivot Table

• An important consideration when you create your Microsoft Excel worksheets is how you want the data to appear when you show it to your colleagues.

• One limitation of the standard Excel worksheet is that you can’t change how the data is organized on the page.– For example, in a worksheet in which each column represents

an hour in the day, each row represents a day in a month, and the body of the worksheet contains the total sales for every hourly period of the month.

– You can’t easily change the worksheet so that it displays only sales on Tuesdays during the afternoon.

• An Excel tool lets you create worksheets that can be sorted, filtered, and rearranged dynamically to emphasize different aspects of your data. That tool is the PivotTable.

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Pivot Table

• In this chapter, you’ll learn – How to create and edit PivotTables from an

existing worksheet, and – How to create a PivotTable with data imported

from a text file.

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Creating Dynamic Lists with PivotTables

• Excel worksheets let you gather and present important data, but the standard worksheet can’t be changed from its original configuration easily.

• Such a neutral presentation of your data is versatile, but it has limitations. For example, you can’t reorganize the contents of your worksheet so that the hours are assigned to the rows and the days to the columns.

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Creating Dynamic Lists with PivotTables

• To create a PivotTable, you must have your data collected in a list in which every row represents a cell in the body of the finished PivotTable.

• The following datasheet shows the first few lines of the list used to create the PivotTable just shown.– Notice that every line of the list holds the Month, Week,

Weekday, Day, Hour, and Sales for every hour in the month. Excel needs that data when it creates the PivotTable

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Creating Dynamic Lists with PivotTables

• Tip– You can also move a field

head to an area of the PivotTable by clicking the field head, clicking the Add To down arrow in the Pivot Table Field List dialog box, clicking the area to which you want to move the field, and then clicking the Add To button in the Pivot Table Field List dialog box.

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Creating Dynamic Lists with PivotTables

• Tip– The Drop Page Fields

Here box is used to filter the contents of the worksheet based on the values in a column from the original data list.

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Creating Dynamic Lists with PivotTables

• Tip – To return a

PivotTable to its default formatting, choose the PivotTable Classic Auto-Format, which can be found at the bottom of the list in the AutoFormat dialog box.

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Editing PivotTables

• After you have created a PivotTable, you can edit it to control how your data is displayed.

• Limit the data to one weekday i.e. Wednesday

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Editing PivotTables

• Open a Pivot Table– Click Show Field List button on the PivotTable toolbar.– You can drag any field name from to the active PivotTable– Dragging a field name to the Drop Page Fields here box doesn’t

change the data in PivotTable, but it does let you filter your PivotTable based on the contents of the field.

– To remove a filter from a PivotTable, click the down arrow of the field head used to filter the PivotTable, click (All), and then click OK.

– Another way to modify is by changing the arrangement of field heads while the PivotTable is open.

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Creating PivotTables from External Data

• While most of the time you will create PivotTables from data stored in Excel worksheets, you can also bring data from outside sources into Excel.

• you can transfer worksheets from one program to another by exporting the data from the original program into a text file, which Excel then translates into a worksheet.

• The text file is known as .CSV file (comma separated variable)

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Creating PivotTables from External Data

• To import data from a text file, you open the Data menu, point to Import External Data, and then click Import Data to open the Select Data Source dialog box.

• From within the Select Data Source dialog box, you navigate to the directory with the text file you want to import. Double-clicking the file launches the Text Import Wizard.

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Creating PivotTables from External Data

• The first page of the Text Import Wizard lets you indicate whether the data file you are importing is delimited or fixed-width; fixed-width means that each cell value will fall within a specific position in the file.

• Clicking Next to accept the default choice

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Creating PivotTables from External Data

• This screen lets you choose the delimiter for the file, (Select Comma) and gives you a preview of what the text file will look like when imported.

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Creating PivotTables from External Data

• This screen lets you change the data type and formatting of the columns in your data list.

• Click Finish to import the data into your worksheet.

• Once the data is in Excel, you can work with it normally.

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Creating PivotTables from External Data

• The Import Data dialog box appears with the Existing worksheet option button selected and =$A$7 in the Existing worksheet box.

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Chapter 9 Key Points• A PivotTable is a versatile tool you can use to rearrange

your data dynamically, letting you emphasize different aspects of your data without creating new worksheets.

• PivotTable data must be formatted as a list.• There are several AutoFormats available for PivotTables;

you’ll probably find one you like.• The PivotTable wizard walks you through the creation

process, but be sure you add the field that will provide the data for the body of your PivotTable last.

• Just as you can limit the data shown in a static worksheet, you can use filters to limit the data shown in a PivotTable.

• If you have data in a compatible format, such as a text file, you can import that data into Excel and create a PivotTable from it.