Excel Pivot Tables | A Quick Start Guide

Pivot Tables are an extremely powerful tool in Excel and a skill that employers crave!  If you are brand new to Pivot Tables than this course is for you. And by chance you’ve been working with them for awhile you may benefit as well.  🙂

This course starts by giving you the fundamentals of pivot tables and presents the topics in short, fun, easy to follow videos. From there we move into working with calculations/ formulas, the ever cool slicer, charting and conclude the class with some fun miscellaneous topics.

Please note: this course has been designed to provide as much information about Excel Pivot tables as the time constraints allow.  Granted many topics can be explained much more in-depth, yet that is not how this course was designed.  Rather the goal was to be as comprehensive, and to cover as much ground as possible.  🙂

By the way did you know that only 5% of excel users know how to make Pivot Tables?*  So you are about to join an exclusive club! 🙂

Who will benefit from this course?

If you use large lists of data and are interested in learning the story behind the data then Pivot Tables are the way to go! Excel Pivot Tables provide quick, accurate and intuitive insight into your data and can provide answers to the even the most complicated of analytics tasks.

Do you need previous experience with Excel to take this course?

Not really.  Even though Pivot Tables are often promoted as an intermediate/ advanced topic in Excel, the key is to recognize everything in the Excel curriculum is topical, not progressive- so the order in which you learn things is up to you. Therefore if you have experience great, if not as long as you…

1. Can select cells on a spreadsheet
2. Have a basic understanding of formulas in Excel
3. Able to navigate between sheets
4. Somewhat familiar with sorts and filters (if not, that’s okay since we give a brief explanation)

All things considered… you’ll be just fine.  🙂

Technical Requirements

• This course was created using Excel 2019. Yet can be used with Excel 2016/ 2019 or Office 365 (primarily for PC/Windows)
• Mac users are welcome, but be aware your screen will be somewhat different

Course Progression

• Overview of source data and basic Pivot Table fundamentals
• Learning simple then advanced formulas used within Pivot Tables
• What are slicers and how to use them, including how to connect slicers to multiple Pivot Tables (yep… you read that right.)
  Pivot charts
• Concluding with some miscellaneous topics including filter reports and the GETPIVOTDATA function

Conclusion

Let’s face it being able to read and analyze data in today’s word is a highly sought after skills and being competent with Pivot Tables will help move you to the front of the proverbial line.

So if you’re looking for a Pivot Table fundamental class, wanting to broaden your existing skills in Excel, or have a need to develop your analytical skills- this class has something for you because knowing Pivot Tables can give you the extra advantage in developing your career.

* Source:  Power Pivot and Power BI: The Excel User’s Guide to DAX, Power Query, Power BI & Power Pivot in Excel 2010-2016; Collie, Singh 2016