What is a Pivot Table in Excel and why is it called that?
In: 11
Let’s say I have a basket of fruit and vegetables. Apples, oranges, bananas, carrots, broccoli, etc..
I want to know how many green apples I have. So I talk to my friend Excel and she tells me she has a sorting machine that can give me the answer. I tell Excel what types of things I want to sort (in this case apples) and Excel runs the basket through the machine and gives me the answer.
In this case, a basket is your Excel spreadsheet and the pivot table is the result given by Excel’s fancy sorting machine.
I can’t remember why exactly it’s called a Pivot Table but I think it’s because it let’s you “Pivot” (I.e. turn) from one view of your data to another.
Lots of subreddits can be confusing
Thinking this is a big subreddit to catch all questions is okay, but when we have questions about special things like computer software, we can go directly to the existing support subreddits; and we can ask those nice people to explain to us like we’re our actual age!
I think of it as a form of data magic.
When you have a big list of things in an excel sheet a pivot table is a way of sensibly grouping things by type.
For instance if you listed all your expenses with dates and a description (like groceries, travel, entertainment and so-on it) it would still be difficult to understand as a simple big list.
A pivot table “pivots” on one or more of the list’s contents (for example expenditure type and or date) to produce insights. For example total expenses by type and month gives a good picture.
In a real world example, an HR department had to produce reports on their salaries by gender. This took them three days a month until they discovered pivot tables. The task reduced to a couple of hours (based on payroll lists).
Latest Answers