Building a Pivot Table

When setting up a pivot table, it's always best to start with the end goal in mind. 0:00 Is there a specific question you are trying to answer? 0:05 Are you just wanting to slice and dice the data to explore any relationships? 0:07 Are you wanting to create a summary report for a presentation? 0:12 If you have the end goal in mind, it will save you time and 0:15 guide your strategy on how you set up your pivot table. 0:18 All right, let's go back to our example spreadsheet to start building our 0:21 pivot table. 0:25 Here, we have our example spreadsheet, and 0:26 we've confirmed the data are in their appropriate format. 0:29 And again, if you would like to follow along, 0:32 you can find the link to this spreadsheet in the project files. 0:34 After we have confirmed the appropriate format, the next thing we need 0:37 to do is create a table, by clicking somewhere in the data range. 0:41 And then going to the Insert tab and selecting Table. 0:45 If you've already clicked somewhere inside the range, 0:49 then the range should set itself for the table. 0:52 So just make sure that My Table's headers are selected, then hit OK. 0:54 Creating a table like this is not absolutely necessary, but 0:59 it is a best practice. 1:03 And if you later add a row to your data, do refresh, which I'll show you later, 1:04 will add the new row to your pivot table automatically. 1:09 That way, you don't have to respecify your range each time a row or 1:12 a column gets added. 1:16 Now you can go up under Table Name and name your table. 1:17 Let's name this one store sales. 1:21 The name has to start with a letter or underscore and it can't include any spaces 1:24 or be the same as an existing name already in the workbook. 1:29 Now on the Insert tab, select Pivot Table, and for the table range, 1:34 it automatically populates with our table name, StoreSales. 1:38 If for some reason it doesn't, you can just type it in here. 1:42 Now, choose where you want the pivot table to be placed, 1:45 in your worksheet or existing worksheet. 1:48 If you choose existing worksheet, you'll need to choose which worksheet or 1:52 tab you want to place the pivot table in. 1:56 I usually choose new worksheet as this keeps the work book a little cleaner in 1:59 my opinion. 2:02 So that's what we will do here. 2:04 Now you can see, the blank pivot table on our new worksheet. 2:05 And if you go to the right, 2:09 you'll notice there are four areas in which you can drag fields. 2:10 The first is Filters, which accesses dropdown so 2:14 you can filter to wherever you want including in the pivot table below. 2:17 The second is Columns, so I'll add column headers here. 2:21 The next one is Rows, and we'll add row headers here, subcategories will nest. 2:25 And the fourth one is sum Values, we'll add any fields that should be summed here. 2:32 In the next video, we'll start adding our fields and see it all come together. 2:38