October 2005
OBJECTIVES
♦
Develop parent data
source sheet
♦
Create PivotTable report
using Excel Wizard
♦
Protecting parent source
data
♦
Modifying PivotTable
reports
♦
Creating multiple
PivotTable reports using one
source data file
♦
♦
Designing PivotCharts
Saving PivotTables and
PivotCharts file to web
Building an Excel PivotTable
for Your Institutional
Research Website
(or Excel PivotTables and PivotCharts 101.5)
Introduction
Excel PivotTables and PivotCharts is an
excellent tool to create, manipulate and
present data. Indepth coverage of tables and
charts, as well as posting the completed
project to a web site can be very beneficial for
your department in providing vast
information. This presentation will introduce
you to the basics of designing and creating a
useful and productive PivotTable for your IR
website.
Presenters:
Kathy Huffman
[email protected]
and
Elaine Turner
[email protected]
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Make Your Data Work for You
Do you have more data than you know what to do with? Do you want to see
trends and patterns at a glance? How about providing others the freedom of
manipulating your data in a way that suits their individual needs? Then
PivotTable reports are for you.
Learn about the little-known, yet powerful, Microsoft Excel PivotTable feature,
which organizes, summarizes, and analyzes your data to reveal its meanings. See
why the PivotTable feature is so useful and make sense out of data by creating a
PivotTable report with charts to better explain your data results. Place your
created PivotTable reports and charts onto your website for others to view.
After you’ve created a PivotTable, share your accomplishments with others in your
field of interest and the general public by placing your completed report onto
your department website. Not only is this a powerful information source, it will
benefit you and your co-workers greatly by alleviating a majority of the ad-hoc
and often repetitive data requests which can be so time consuming.
PivotTable reports offer comparisons, reveal patterns and relationships, and
analyze trends. They compare, they reveal, they analyze, by displaying different
views of data, turning data into information that makes sense. Each PivotTable
report gives you a different view of your data, answering your questions on the
spot, and is customized to your purposes.
PivotTable reports do so much to make data manageable. Move the data around
again and again, to get as many clear answers as you have questions. There are so
many things you can do with PivotTable reports, including formatting, re-using
the data, and making it interactive in a Web browser.
By placing the data file onto your website, inquirers are allowed the freedom to
manipulate the data as they please. Using the “save as” feature, their final version
of the data may be saved on their personal computer for future use. All this, and
yet the parent source data remains untouched and unchanged by anyone but you!
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Start with Raw Data
♦
Check your source data to ensure that it’s correctly organized for good PivotTable
report results. Replace any special coding with actual text data.
♦
If necessary, change the order in which items are sorted.
♦
Decide which data you want to put in row, column, or page areas on the report
layout.
♦
Update the PivotTable report whenever the source data is revised by simply refreshing the links.
♦
Share your completed PivotTable reports and/or charts by putting them on your IR
website for others to view and benefit from!
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Source Data for PivotTable Reports
Enrollment Fall 2004 data was used to create the reports in this pivot workbook.
If you scan through this source data, you’ll notice that it’s difficult to see the
trends, even if you sort or filter the data, there are just too many records to analyze
at a glance.
Excel can retrieve much larger amounts of data than this, and PivotTable reports
are one of the best Excel tools for extracting the significance from a large, detailed
data set.
The data is organized in list format, similar to how a query returns database
records: each column contains similar data, the columns have headings in the first
row, and the list isn’t interrupted by any blank rows or columns (although blank
cells within the data are OK).
The first row of your source data must have a heading for each column. All
empty rows or columns within the range of data to be used for the report must be
removed. Remember, each column should contain only one kind of data.
Because Excel automatically creates subtotals and grand totals in a PivotTable
report, you must remove any subtotals or grand totals from the source data before
creating the report.
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Designing Your Report
The wizard presents you with a new worksheet area that contains everything you
need to lay out a PivotTable view of your data: The PivotTable Field List and a
layout area.
The Row Fields area displays data vertically, one item per row. The Column
Fields area displays data horizontally, one item in each column.
The PivotTable wizard will walk you through the process of creating an initial
PivotTable.
While there are many advanced options available to use, in this example, we will
simply click the Finish Button to create a quick PivotTable.
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Auto Formatting
A major step in mastering PivotTables is to understand how the automatic
formatting controls can make data clean-up a snap. Simply pull down the
Format menu and select AutoFormat.
Excel provides an assortment of formats to choose from. Simply choose a
format, and your data is now more readable.
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Modifying Reports
Create multiple reports and charts using only one parent data source sheet.
Generate reports of various levels of information simply by selecting only a few
or many fields within the source data.
Using the PivotTable field dialog box you can modify reports to display
different results such as averages, counts, minimums, maximums, percentages
and more.
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Creating A PivotChart
The chart on the Chart sheet is a PivotChart report that provides a graphical
representation of the summarized data used in the PivotTable reports in this
workbook. A PivotChart report has many features similar to a PivotTable
report: you can change the layout, sort, filter, and group the data.
To create a PivotChart report, run the PivotTable and PivotChart Report
wizard, in step 1 select PivotChart (with PivotTable), and then complete the
steps of the wizard as you would for a PivotTable report. Or, if you already
have a PivotTable report that you want to chart, click the report and then click
the Chart Wizard button on the PivotTable toolbar.
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PivotChart Report on the Chart Sheet
A PivotChart report always has a dependency on a PivotTable report that
provides the data to be charted, called the associated PivotTable report. When
you make changes to a PivotChart report, its associated PivotTable report
reflects the changes.
A new PivotChart report always appears on a separate chart sheet, because
PivotChart reports tend to include lots of data and therefore usually need
plenty of space. You can easily move a PivotChart report onto a worksheet, for
example to put it on the same worksheet as its associated PivotTable report.
Just click the chart and click Location on the Chart menu.
You can use most of the chart type, formatting, and options available for
regular charts to customize a PivotChart report. For more information, ask the
Excel Answer Wizard about PivotChart reports.
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Web PivotTable
Now that you have mastered the PivotTable creations, why not share them with others
via your website?
After creating PivotTable reports, save the data source sheet to another location and
place only the PivotTable file on the web. Remember this step to protect your source
file, yet allow inquirers to manipulate the actual PivotTable itself. Saving your file as a
“Read Only” or placing a protection on the file blocks the user from being able to
manipulate the table by dragging and dropping selected fields. To keep this very
important advantage available for your viewers, save your source file in another
location. The web file will always be linked to your parent source file. Also, if you
should change data within the parent source file a simple refresh or “F8” will update
the PivotTable file, too.
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Excel Tools
PivotTables not only work well publishing to the Web, they work well in
conjunction with other Excel tools including Subtotaling, AutoFilters, sending
e-mail, printing multiple worksheets with one command, grouping, outlining,
and copy and paste linking to Micorsoft Word or Microsoft PowerPoint.
PivotTables just might be the single most powerful tool in Excel for financial
reporting, budgeting, and data analysis. On a scale of easy to difficult,
learning and mastering PivotTables leans more towards the difficult side of the
scale for many users. Perserverance and the use of your own data will be most
helpful in mastering this area. Once you’ve created many PivotTables and
Pivotcharts, be sure to keep your techniques a secret--you don’t want anyone in
your office to realize just how much Excel does for you--allow them to think
that you are a genius! Invest some time and give PivotTables and honest try.
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www.msstate.edu/dept/oir
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