Pivot Table in Excel
A pivot table in Excel is a powerful tool used to calculate, summarize, and analyze data, allowing users to see comparisons, patterns, and trends in their data. It is an outcome of statistically processing tabularized raw data and can be used for decision making. Pivot tables work by aggregating groups of individual values within one or more discrete categories, and the aggregations or summaries on the groups of the individual terms might include sums, averages, counts, or other statistics. They are especially designed for querying large amounts of data in many user-friendly ways, subtotaling and aggregating numeric data, summarizing data by categories and subcategories, and creating custom calculations and formulas.
To create a pivot table in Excel, users need to select the cells they want to create a pivot table from, then go to the "Insert" tab and select "PivotTable". The data should be organized in columns with a single header row, and each cell in subsequent rows should contain data appropriate to its column heading. Excel tables are already in list format and are good candidates for PivotTable source data.
Pivot tables are an integral part of many spreadsheet applications and some database software, as well as being found in other data visualization tools and business intelligence packages. They can also connect to external data sources such as SQL Server tables, SQL Server Analysis Services cubes, Azure Marketplace, Office Data Connection (.odc) files, XML files, Access databases, and text files to create PivotTables.
In summary, a pivot table in Excel is a versatile and essential tool for data analysis, providing users with the ability to quickly summarize and analyze large amounts of data, and make informed decisions based on the insights gained from the data.
