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Prepare Data for Excel Pivot Tables

Before you work with the Excel Pivot Tables, you will need to arrange your dataset first in... read more

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Bryan
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Overview

Prepare Data for Excel Pivot Tables

Before you work with the Excel Pivot Tables, you will need to arrange your dataset first in the right format and prepare data for Pivot Tables. There are a couple of principles that I will demonstrate to you here:

  • Tabular Format – your data is organized as a list with labeled columns
  • No Gaps – no blank columns and no blank rows
  • Tables – use this for structured referencing, Excel automatically updates as more rows and columns are added

Then you will be able to harness the full power of Pivot Tables!

Exercise Workbook:

Download excel workbookPreparing-Your-Data-for-Pivot-Tables.xlsx


Let us go over the principles one by one! Here is our data set:

Prepare Data for Excel Pivot Tables

You can see that it has a couple of issues. There are 2 columns without label headers:

Prepare Data for Excel Pivot Tables

Then we also have 1 blank column and 2 blank rows. Let us get this data cleaned up!

Prepare Data for Excel Pivot Tables

STEP 1: Let me quickly demonstrate to you first that we cannot use this set of data to create a Pivot Table.

See also  New Pivot Table Features in Excel 2019 and Office 365

Select the entire table of data and Go to Insert > Tables > PivotTable

Prepare Data for Excel Pivot Tables

STEP 2: Click OK

Prepare Data for Excel Pivot Tables

We get this error message because our data is not Pivot Table ready. Let us fix that!

Prepare Data for Excel Pivot Tables

 

Tabular Format

STEP 3: Let us follow the Tabular Format principle. For the blank column headers, add SALES YEAR and SALES QTR:

Prepare Data for Excel Pivot Tables

 

No Gaps

STEP 4: Now for the No Gaps principle, delete the blank column D and delete the blank rows 4 and 8.

Prepare Data for Excel Pivot Tables

Our data is now looking good!

Prepare Data for Excel Pivot Tables

 

Tables

STEP 5: Go to Insert > Tables > Table to convert this into an Excel Table

Prepare Data for Excel Pivot Tables

STEP 6: Click OK

Prepare Data for Excel Pivot Tables

We have our Excel Table ready! You get a lot more feature here like sorting, filtering, Table Styles to name a few.

Prepare Data for Excel Pivot Tables

Now that you have prepared for data, let’s try and create a Pivot Table again!

 

STEP 7: Go to Insert > Tables > PivotTable

See also  Clean Data Set for Pivot Table

Prepare Data for Excel Pivot Tables

STEP 8: Click OK to insert the Pivot Table into a new worksheet.

Prepare Data for Excel Pivot Tables

And we are all set!

Prepare Data for Excel Pivot Tables

 

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Prepare Data for Excel Pivot Tables | MyExcelOnline
Bryan

Bryan is a best-selling book author of the 101 Excel Series paperback books.

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