Pivot table
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A pivot table is a powerful data summarization tool in Microsoft Excel and other electronic spreadsheet programs. Among other functions, it can automatically sort, count, and total data stored in a spreadsheet and create a second table displaying the summarized data. Pivot tables are useful to quickly create crosstabs. The user sets up and changes the summary's structure by dragging-and-dropping fields graphically. This "rotation" or pivoting of the summary table gives the concept its name. The name PivotTable is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation.
To use a pivot table in Microsoft Excel, the data (for example a flat table listing sales events, with records such as salesperson, date, quantity, price and item) is either entered into a regular spreadsheet, or automatically loaded from an external source. To set up the pivot table, a wizard located under the menu Data|PivotTable can be used. The user drags field names into a schematic table layout (for example to total the sales of each salesperson) and sets up any special format options. The pivot table is automatically computed and displayed either on the same sheet, or in a related spreadsheet.
According to Bill Jelen, author of the book Pivot Table Data Crunching, the concept that led to today's pivot table came from Lotus Development Corporation with a revolutionary spreadsheet program called Lotus Improv. Improv was envisioned in 1986 by Pito Salas. Salas realized that spreadsheets have patterns of data. By designing a tool that could recognize these patterns, one could quickly build advanced data models.
In a 2004 survey at MrExcel.com, fewer than 42% of Excel users make use of the powerful features in pivot tables.
In OpenOffice.org Calc, the DataPilot provides similar functionality with drag-and-drop column fields inside the pivot table.
A pivot table can be graphically represented in a pivot chart.
[edit] References
- Alexander, Michael and Bill Jelen: Pivot Table Data Crunching (QUE, ISBN 0-7897-3435-4) June 2005
- Call for Help (TV Show), Episode 239, originally aired 8/9/2005
- U.S. Patent & Trademark Office [1]
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
[edit] Online tutorials
- A series of tutorials by John F. Lacher LLC
- Introduction to pivot tables by Microsoft Business Solutions
- The benefits of using Excel Pivot Tables
- Summary Tables
[edit] Books on pivot tables
- Pivot Table Data Crunching (Business Solutions) (ISBN 0-7897-3435-4)
- A Complete Guide to PivotTables: A Visual Approach (ISBN 1-59059-432-0) (in-depth review at slashdot.org)
