Streamlined Reporting with

Streamlined Reporting with Presentation by: Ryan Black, M.B.A. Business and Fiscal Officer Office of the Provost Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio

Microsoft Excel offers one of the most powerful software tools ever! Pivot Tables can literally take hundreds of thousands of rows of data and pull it together into a dynamic, interactive table that brings endless meaning to your data. You can add, remove, and/or change the data at the click of a mouse and the pivot table will update itself instantly. 1. Before you Start Before creating a pivot table you must first have a selection of data with appropriate field names (header rows) that indicate what each column of data represents. Figure 1 (below) shows a sample of our data set. Figure 1 In Excel, every column (A-Z) represents a field. For example, in figure 1 our first field name in this data sample is Year, which is in cell A1. The field names will be crucial to identifying what data we want to summarize in our pivot table. NOTE: The field names should ALWAYS be placed in the very 1 st row of your data set and should be uniquely named. Each line of data below the field names are referred to as a record. The records are the details of each field. For example, in figure 2 below the first record is 2012 in cell A2. NOTE: Please be sure there are no blank rows contained in your records.

Figure 2 2. Inserting a Pivot Table Once your data set is cleaned up and modified as you wish, you are ready to insert your Pivot Table. To create a Pivot Table you must first go to the Insert tab in Excel and click the PivotTable button at the top left side of the screen. See figure 3 below. Figure 3 Next, select the dial button next to Select a table or range as shown in figure 4 below. Select the entire data set you wish to enter into the Pivot Table, INCLUDING your header rows. You can then choose to enter the Pivot Table into a New Worksheet or an Existing Worksheet. Be careful not to enter your Pivot Table on top of existing data that could cause issues with your Pivot Table.

Figure 4 SELECT YOUR DATA - OPTIONS Select a table or range This option allows you to highlight your data set in Excel. To select your data simply place your cursor in the space next to Table/Range and then go directly to your data set and highlight all of your data (including the field names). Use an external data source The data comes from data source other than Excel such as Access, dbase, FileMaker or several others. We will not cover this option in this session. After selecting which option you ll be using for your data you will then have the option of putting your Pivot Table into either a New Worksheet or Existing Worksheet. New Worksheet- Selecting New Worksheet will simply create the Pivot Table in a new tab in Excel. To choose this option select the dial next to New Worksheet then click OK. Existing Worksheet This option will allow you to put a Pivot Table inside the same sheet as your data, or any other Worksheet that you currently have in your Excel workbook file. To do so simply select the dial next to Existing Worksheet then place your cursor in the box next to Location. You can now explore your Excel file and select the location you wish to place your Pivot Table. Click OK. NOTE: Be careful not to allow your Pivot Table to overlap your existing data and overwrite the information in those cells. Excel will warn you if this is about to happen. For this session we will move forward with adding our Pivot Table as a new worksheet. Now that you have created your Pivot Table in a New Worksheet you will see something similar to figure 5 below.

Figure 5 Your Pivot Table is on the left side of your screen. On the right side of the screen is your Pivot Table Field List. We will talk more about these in the next section. 3. Adding To and Modifying Your Pivot Table Using the Pivot Table Field List In figure 6 below you will see the Pivot Table Field list. The first box contains the Pivot Table fields from your original data set. The header rows in your original data set should all be listed here. If they are not, you need to ensure your source data includes your entire data set. Figure 6

Below the Pivot Table Field List are four additional boxes. Let s talk about each of these boxes before moving on further. Filters- Filter your data to only include certain records. If there are fields you do not want in your Pivot Table, but yet you want to filter based on their values, this is where you can place them. Column Labels- This is where you will place the fields you wish to be displayed as columns at the top of your Pivot Table. Row Labels- This is where you will place the fields you wish to be displayed as rows on the side Pivot Table. Values- These will be the fields that you want to summarize in your Pivot Table. For example, if you wanted to summarize the year to date expenses you would place the year to date field in this box. Values can be based upon sum, count, average, max, min, product, count numbers, StdDev, StdDevp, var, or varp. I will talk more about how to modify the values in the next section. To add your fields to the areas defined above determine what fields you wish to summarize and find them in the Pivot Table Field List. Click and drag the field name to one of the four boxes below the field list. Your Pivot Table will then refresh making your Pivot Table look similar to figure 7 below. Below is an example of the Pivot Table with a few fields added to it. Figure 7 4. Formatting Pivot Table Fields You now have the option to change the settings for the fields you placed in your pivot table. To modify the field settings for those fields in your pivot table click the arrow to the right of the field in the

corresponding box then select Field Settings. With these items you can change items related to Subtotals and Filters and/or Layouts & Print. See figure 8 below. Figure 8 The fields in the Values box have field setting options related to Summarize by or Show values as because these values are typically numerical in nature. Depending on the nature of the field you are looking at, some of the options may be grayed out meaning you cannot use them (for example you cannot sum up text). See figure 9 below.

Figure 9 Summarize by - This will enable you to change how your values are calculated (sum, count, average, etc). If the value you selected is not a numerical value you will not be able to change Summary Values by. Show Values as - This option will allow you to decide which mathematical way you want to display your values field. Now let s shift our focus to formatting fields from within the Pivot Table. From here we can modify the fields included in the Pivot Table under the Row Labels and Column Labels. See figure 10 below Figure 10 This menu gives you the options related to sorting, date filters, and value filters.

Sort oldest to newest or sort newest to oldest Label Filters Filter the values based on a specific value. For example, you may select a range of values, a text string that starts with or ends with a certain value, etc. Value Filters Filter the values of this particular field based on some other specific condition. For example, you may only want to select the year that is between 2013 and 2014. Manual filter All of the values will be listed in this drop down list with a check box next to them. You can manually select which ones you want to view and which you do not want to view. NOTE: There are several different ways to filter Pivot Tables to get the results you need. Each person may have a preference of how they like to do it. There is no right or wrong answer. Just play around and do what suits you best. 5. Additional Pivot Table Format Options Format options in this section refer more to the look and feel of your Pivot Table. In the PivotTable Tools tab at the top of your screen you will find two tabs with different formatting options. Figure 11 Slicers 1. Analyze This tab presents us with sections for the PivotTable Name, Active Field settings, Grouping, Sorting, Data (refresh/change), Actions, Tools, and a Show/Hide selection. 2. Design This tab involves tools related to the look and feel of our pivot table, which include formatting related to the layout options, style options, and the styles (color schemes). I am adding a small segment about this functionality for two reasons: 1. because this is yet another way that you can filter your Pivot Table and 2. Slicers are sweet! Insert Slice is an option under the Analyze tab. When you click on this button you can select which fields you want to Slice or filter. This will then insert a slicer for each of the fields you chose directly on your screen so you can visually see your filter values. Pretty cool stuff! Here is an example of what the slicer looks like:

Figure 12 Simply select the values that you want to display. Those values highlighted are the values that are shown in the Pivot Table. In addition to these two tabs that include specific formatting options for your Pivot Table, the normal formatting options found in Excel can be applied to the Pivot Table as well. 6. Viewing the detailed data behind the Pivot Table Double click on any one cell within the Pivot Table to view the detailed data from your original data source. NOTE: When doing this you will see a new tab open up that includes the details that make up the value that you double-clicked on. See figure 13 below.

Figure 13 7. VLOOKUP Function Alright, get ready to learn one of the most powerful Excel functions known to man.vlookup! Learn this one and you will SHOCK the boss with your timely completion of tasks every day! VLOOKUP looks at a unique value in data set, finds that same value in another data set, and returns a value. There are 4 parts to the VLOOKUP function. I ll give you the technical terms and then try to give you the question that Excel is asking of you. One of the most important rules before starting is to ensure that your values are formatted the same way. If you have numbers stored as numbers and are trying to look them up in a list that has them formatted as text this function will NOT work. 1. Lookup_value What are you looking up? Select the cell that incudes that value. 2. Table_array What table are you wanting to look for that value in? Select all of the columns of the table that have the information you need. 3. Column_index_num What column in that table do you want to return when I find that value? The table from #2 above as a certain number of columns. Counting left to right, what column number do you want to return? Enter that number. 4. [range_lookup] enter FALSE. For the sake of this training we will keep this simple so just enter the text FALSE.

Once you have entered all of this click ENTER and your formula will activate. If your formula did not find a certain value it will display #N/A. 8. CONCATENATE Function CONCATENATE is a function in Excel that can join together two or more text strings into one string. For example, if you have separate fields for first and last name, but want these listed together you can use the CONCATENATE function. Very powerful, yet very simple! To use this function you will simply type in =CONCATENATE( then select the cells that you want to join together separating them by a comma. For example, if you want to join cell A2 and B2 together with a space between them, your function will look like this: And the result