Summarize, Visualize, Filter And Protect Excel Data, Using PivotTables and Graphics

Learning MS Excel PivotTables is quite simple. A good number of learning platforms offer learning on this tool. However, make sure you choose a course that is:

-      Taught by industry experts

-      Has the latest syllabus

-      Offers certification for your study

-      Is respected by employers.

A course that meets all these criteria is this aptly titled one: Summarize, Visualize, Filter And Protect Excel Data, Using PivotTables and Graphics. Why we recommend this course is that it meets all of the above fulfilments, and is very reasonably priced. A course like this is your passport to a flourishing career in MS Excel, at which you can learn to master data analysis using PivotTables.

Well, a brief understanding of PivotTables is key to answering this question. PivotTables is a data analysis feature of MS Excel that enables you to perceptively analyze data and present in a very easy and aesthetically pleasing manner. Summarizing data is very vital for those in managerial positions who need to constantly get and read reports. These reports are the true indicators of the business’ performance.

Given this criticality of PivotTables, it is but natural that those who can use PivotTables proficiently are considered important for an organization, because they will be called upon to do all the insightful aspects of reporting, such as creating and presenting sales forecasts, analyzing which projects are bringing in what kind of revenue, invoicing, understanding what level of manpower is being used for which kind of jobs, keeping track of project progress, and so on.

Further, PivotTables is excellent at helping businesses understand exactly how any particular variant of their products or services is performing in which geography, what revenue was earned on what expenditure, etc.

Given the strength of PivotTables, it goes without saying that the employee who has thorough knowledge of this tool plays a crucial role in an organization in a wide range of industries.

For beginners, yes, MS Excel PivotTables can be a little frustrating, especially in making it behave the way you would want it to. However, with practice, you will learn to handle its characteristics.

It is to clear issues relating to learning and mastering PivotTables that SimplivLearning has created this wonderful PivotTables course, which will run you through all the elements of this tool.

Microsoft has built the PivotTables feature of MS Excel in such a way that it is very flexible and intuitive. It offers umpteen options for making any PivotTables look professional and pleasing to the eye.

You can highlight particular data, you can place a set of data in a place that you think makes it look prominent, add styles of your choice, show banded rows and columns for easy scanning, and so on.

Your ideal guide to giving your PivotTables the look of your choice is none other than this Microsoft page itself. 

A few learning platforms offer certification upon completion of a free MS Excel PivotTables course.

A PivotTables course can range anywhere from zero to $ 300. This huge variation in the cost can be attributed to the syllabus, the value the certificate carries in the industry, the reputation of the learning platform, the location, etc. 

Businesses don’t look for just data, but for one that is insightful and meaningful, and which helps the business arrive at crucial decisions. A professional who knows how to leverage PivotTables provides them the exact data analysis they require. It is to be in this vital role in the organization that one should learn and master PivotTables.

Classic PivotTables is a layout type in PivotTables which allows you to drag and drop pivot fields in the worksheet directly to change the layout. In Classic PivotTables, you can bypass the use of the PivotTable Fields List.

Like all other such tools, MS Excel too, can be mastered by constant practice and exploration. Enrolling for a specialized beginner to advanced MS Excel course can add tremendous value to your learning by making it more focused, more purposeful, and quicker.

Yes. But be careful to see and understand what these courses offer, because most free courses usually offer very little real learning.

Yes, you can.

If learning the nuts and bolts of MS Excel is what you are looking for, why not go for this MS Excel video series from Microsoft? It gives comprehensive attention to the features of this tool, and can familiarize you with these. However, this is only learning for your understanding, as it does not offer certification.

A Microsoft Office Specialist: Microsoft Excel Expert (Office 2019) is made available from Microsoft. This MS Excel certificate “…demonstrates competency in creating, managing, and distributing professional spreadsheets for a variety of specialized purposes and situations”.

Microsoft has priced an Excel certification, earned through its Microsoft Office Specialist: Microsoft Excel Expert (Office 2019), at $ 100. The price can vary by the region in which the certification exam is proctored.

MS Excel certifications from the Microsoft Office Specialist: Excel Associate certification onwards offer approximately 150 hours of hands-on instruction and experience in using this tool.

This should be a reasonably good period of learning to gain an understanding of MS Excel. A few candidates may require additional hours of learning, which could vary by the individual’s capacity for learning and effort.

The Slicer feature enables you to do this. It is a rather simple feature, whose details you can have by visiting this Microsoft page. 

You can put PivotTables to a number of uses to visualize your data. You can use it for:

-      Exploring

-      Analyzing

-      Summarizing

-      Presenting the data in ways that you want to.

More of what all this feature can do with your data visualization can be read here.

This is yet another function of Microsoft Excel that needs nothing more than a few clicks. All that you need to do is to follow these steps in the PivotTable:

-      Right-click the value field you wish to summarize

-      Click Summarize Values By

-      Click the summary function you want it to perform.

Microsoft has provided easily comprehensible resources on this function on its Microsoft Support page.

Microsoft offers an amazing range of ways by which you can summarize data in MS Excel using any of these tabs:

-      Auto Functions such as SUMIFS, SUMIF, COUNTIFS, AVERAGEIFS, and MAXIFS

-      Sort and Filter

-      SubTotal Feature

-      An Excel Table

-      Slicers

-      Excel Pivot Tables

-      Excel Functions

-      Descriptive Statistics From Analysis Toolpak.

The standard method for using each of these to summarize data is to follow these steps:

-      First, import data from an external source. To do this, click on the Data tab and select From Other Sources from the Get External Data group

-      Convert a range of cells into an Excel table. This is for the purpose of creating specific headings for each column of data and adding descriptive captions for rows that contain information of only column titles. Next, with the AutoFilter feature, you can filter out unnecessary rows, such as those with incorrect data or columns

-      Create a PivotTable with the data obtained above to display all possible summaries within only one table. To do this, you should go back to “Get External Data” again, but choose the respective method mentioned above for each summarization.

Excel offers a feature called Quick Analysis. This is considered the quickest way of summarizing data, as you can generate instant charts using this. You can learn the ropes of how to use this feature through this Microsoft page.

Obviously, graphical displays. Graphical displays give bar charts an attractive look and make the data look visually appealing.

This is done in three steps with different sub steps within each of these:

1.    Sort the data

a)    Select the cells in which your data is contained

b)   Click "Data" in the Excel ribbon

c)    Click "Sort" in the "Sort & Filter" tab

d)   Click the "Sort by" drop-down box and select one of the box's fields

e)    Click OK.

2.    Summarize With Subtotals

a)    Click "Subtotal" in the ribbon's Outline group

b)   Click the "At each change in” drop-down box. Select the field that you used to sort the data

c)    Check the box in the section labeled "Add subtotal to."

d)   Click "OK". This will add a new pane for managing subtotals on the left side of your spreadsheet

e)    Click the "-" symbols. This will collapse your data and display only the subtotals.

3.    Summarizing the data into a chart 

a)    Click "Insert" in Excel's ribbon. Click "Pie" in the Charts group. Clicking one of the "2D Pie Chart" options creates a blank chart

b)   Right-click the chart and click "Select Data" to open the Select Data Source dialog box

c)    Click the Edit button in the "Legend Entries" box. This opens the Edit Series dialog box

d)   Click the button to the right of the "Series name" box. In this, select the cells that contain the category labels

e)    Click the button to the right of the "Series values" box. From here, select the cells in which the subtotals are contained

f)     Click "OK". This will close the dialog boxes and insert the summary chart.

The most common ones are:

-      Frequency tables

-      Pie charts

-      Bar charts.

A summary table, also called a PivotTable, and frequency distribution table are two of the most popular types of tables used for summarizing data.

Creating a graphic or a chart from a PivotTable is done using these steps:

-      Select a cell in your table

-      Select PivotTable Tools > Analyze > PivotChart

-      Select a chart

-      Select OK.

You can link a PivotTable to a graph in MS Excel by following these steps:

-      Click on the new pivot chart to select it

-      Under Chart Tools, click the Design tab on the Excel Ribbon

-      Click Select Data. This opens the Select Data Source window

-      Click any cell in the pivot table, then click the OK button.

Data can be analyzed from a PivotTable in MS Excel by following these three easy steps:

-      Click ANALYZE under PIVOTTABLE TOOLS on the Ribbon

-      Click Insert Slicer in the Filter group. The Insert Slicers box, which contains all the fields from your data, appears

-      Select the fields that you want to analyze and click OK. 

A PivotTable is an interactive tool that helps you to quickly summarize large amounts of data. Using a PivotTable, you can quickly analyze numerical data in detail. It gives you the power to anticipate questions about your data and face them.

This very useful Microsoft PivotTables and PivotCharts page has details of the uses of PivotTables, with the suitable illustrations.

The main purpose of PivotTables is to help understand and analyze numerical data at great depth. Excel does this and presents these in the form of visualization, which helps to process and comprehend this data. The critical and meaningful insights it derives from data are presented in a visual form, which is why it is primarily a data visualization tool.

We could think of these two main uses from data visualization:

-      It analyzes raw data in perceptive ways that the human mind can sometimes miss

-      It presents the data in a visual form that is free of clutter and pleasing to the eye.

At its most basic, a data visualization tool helps to access and sight data that gives insight into these critical aspects of it:

-      Trends

-      Patterns

-      Outliers.