Excel pivot tables are very useful and powerful feature of MS Excel. They are be used to create instant summaries, reports and data analysis from your raw data.
In this page, learn all about how to create an Excel pivot table and customize it.
Table of Contents
What are Excel Pivot Tables?
A pivot table turns your data into report format. Here is a sample Pivot table from sales data, showing total sales by region.
How to create a Pivot Table?
We will use 2019 sales data of a fictional company. This data contains 466 rows of sales information in columns – Month, Salesman, Region, Product, No. Customers, Net Sales, Profit / Loss. Here is a preview of our data.
Download the sample data & example pivot tables here.
To create a pivot table showing totals sales by region, follow these steps.
- Select any cell in the data.
- Go to Insert ribbon and click “Pivot Table” button.
- Click ok on the next screen.
- You will be taken a new spreadsheet with blank Pivot Table canvas. Here, using the Pivot Table Fields panel set “Regions” field to row label area, “Products” to “Filter” area and “Net Sales” to values area. See below illustration.
Your pivot table will be ready. We can see that “West” is our best region. This is why Pivot tables are easy for finding answers to common business questions.
Two dimensional Pivots - Row & Column fields
You can add fields to both “Row” and “Column” label area of a pivot. Such Pivot Tables are normally called two dimensional pivots. Here is a demo of a two dimensional pivot table showing Total Sales by Region & Sales Person.
Multi-dimensional Pivots - Row & Column fields
You can also add more than one item to “Row” or “Column” label area. This creates a multi-dimensional Pivot Report. Here is one such pivot report showing total sales by Region, Sales Person & Product for selected months.
How to format Pivot Table values?
By default, numbers in Pivot Tables tend to just look like zip codes, without any proper formatting. This is easy to fix though. Simply right click on the values and use “Value Field Settings” to set up the formatting. To set currency formatting for our Total sales by region Pivot Report,
- Go to value field settings
- Click on Number Format button
- Set up the formatting to “Currency”
- Done.
See this illustration.
Sorting in Excel Pivot Tables
You can easily sort pivot report by ascending or descending order of the value. To do this, just right click on the value, select Sort > and specify the order.
Here is an example of sorted pivot report of Number of customers by Sales person.
Filtering Excel Pivot Tables
You are looking at Regional total sales and want to know what the total is for just “RapidZoo” product. You can do this by filtering the pivot table. Excel offers two powerful ways to filter Pivot Tables
- Report filters
- Slicers
Both methods are illustrated below. Read on to learn how to use them.
Filtering with Report Filters
Report filter is a great way to restrict the data that is flowing to your pivot. To set them up, just add the field to “Filters” area in the fields panel. Now, using the filter button next to “Product”, select the product you want.
Here is a quick demo of report filters in action.
Filtering with Slicers
There are a ton of cool features in Excel Pivot Tables, but slicers are hands-down the best feature. At-least, that is what I think. They make filtering and ad-hoc data analysis a breeze.
A slicer is a visual filter. You can add a slicer on any field by right clicking on it from the fields panel. See the illustration “Adding filters to a pivot report” from above.
Once you have a slicer on Product, simply click on any product name to see the report for that.
Here is a quick demo of Pivot Table with slicers.
Other kinds of filtering - Value & Label Filters
Apart from report filters & Slicers, Pivot Tables also allow you to filter by a field or value.
Field or Label Filter: If you don’t want to see “Middle” region in a row label area, just click on the filter button next to “Row Labels” and uncheck the region. This type of filtering is called Label Filtering.
Value Filter: If you want to see just the top 2 regions by total sales, then you need a value filter. Simply go to filter button next to row labels and using value filters, apply a top 10 filter but set it to top 2 values by “Sum of net sales.”
Changing Calculations in Pivot Tables
The default calculation in Pivot Tables is SUM for number fields and COUNT for all others. But you can also customize the calculation easily. Just right click on the value field and choose different type of summary from right click menu.
Changing from SUM to AVERAGE in a Pivot Table
Here is a quick illustration of how to change calculation type from “SUM” to “AVERAGE”.
Pivot Table Layouts & Colors
By default, Excel Pivot Tables are in compact layout. This means, if you add multiple fields to row label area, they will all be shown in same column, with indentation.
You can change the layout of a pivot table to other formats too.
- Compact form (default)
- Outline form
- Tabular form
You can change the layout from Pivot Table Design ribbon.
Here is an example of same Pivot Table in both Compact and Tabular layouts.
Styling & colors of Excel Pivot Tables
You can apply any formatting to the pivot tables. MS Excel has some very good pivot table styles. Just select pivot table cells, go to Pivot Table Design ribbon. See below image to understand various options available.
Visualizing with Pivot Charts
You can use Pivot Charts to visualize the same information in a graphic format. Here is a sample Pivot Chart of Net Sales by Region & Product.
Steps for creating a Pivot Chart:
- Select any cell in the Pivot Table.
- Click on Insert > Chart or Analyze > Pivot Chart button.
- Insert the type of chart you want.
- You will get a Pivot Chart.
Interactive Pivot Chart with Slicers
Slicers make it incredibly easy to create interactive charts. Once you have a regular Pivot Chart, simply add a slicer to it (right click on the field in “Pivot Table Fields” area and select “Add as Slicer”). You now have an interactive Pivot Chart.
Here is a demo of interactive Pivot Chart.
Updating Pivot Tables (Refresh)
Whenever you have new data, just use “Refresh” button to update your Pivot Tables. You can find this button in multiple places.
- Data ribbon
- Pivot Table Analyze ribbon
- On right clicking any Pivot Table
- By pressing ALT+F5 (refreshes single pivot) or CTRL+ALT+F5 (refreshes all pivots)
What if you want to point Pivot to new data?
Select any cell in the Pivot Table and from Analyze ribbon, use the “Change Data Source” button. Point input data to a new source. As long as the new data has same fields, everything will work smoothly.
Pivot Tables in Excel - Complete video tutorial
I have made a 21 minute video explaining how to create, format, customize, visualize, filter and refresh Pivot Tables. This video is packed with many tricks, ideas and inspiration. Check it out below.
Download - Sample data & example Pivot Tables
Please click here to download the sample file for this article. It contains fictional sales data, several example pivot tables, charts and additional resources.
Examine the pivot table settings and use the data to learn more.
Next Steps
Now that you are familiar with Pivot Tables, explore these additional pages to learn more about data analysis & reporting.
Beginner:
- Pivot Table from multiple tables – Data Model & Relationships
- Number and Percentages in same Pivot
- 5 Pivot tables to try when you have too much data
- Sub-totals but only on one level
- Distinct count in Excel Pivot Tables
- How to use Report Filters
Intermediate & Advanced Users:
- All you need to know about Slicers
- 6 Time Saving Pivot Table Tricks
- Advanced Pivot Table Tricks
- Conditional formatting for Pivot Tables
- Introduction to GETPIVOTDATA
- Getting started with Power Pivot – Percentage of something calculation example
Recommended Websites & Books:
These are my favorite places to learn more about Pivot Tables.
Websites:
- Excel Pivot Tables page on Contextures
- Pivot Table tips from Excel Jet
- 50 things you can do with Pivot Tables from MyExcelOnline
Books:
- Excel Pivot Table data crunching by Bill Jelen
- MS Excel Data Analysis and Business Modeling by Wayne Winston
- Excel Bible by J Walkenbach
Courses:
Happy Learning.
25 Responses to “Shift Calendar Template – FREE Download”
Hi Chandoo,
your recent postings include only Excel 2007 templates. Unfortunately the company I work at still runs Excel 2003. Is it possible to get your awesome files in other excel version as well?
Thanks so much for your great excel stuff!
Is it possible to do this for shifts with hours instead of days? To organise a three shift day?
Thanks in advance,
Stelios
In my organization there are 45 employees i need split then into three shifts ex:A shift:14,B shift:14,C shift:14 and week off:3 kindly help me on this.
@Masthan
You need to understand what rules your company has for the various shifts / roster combinations
Chandoo, I once did a shift control spreadsheet for my team. I put one person in each line, the columns were the days. I put a shift code in each cell indicating in which shift that person should work, or if the person were out that day. I have two codes for being out. One is for vacations and one is to compensate days worked in weekends. This way I was able to count how many persons I have in each shift, how many were on vacations and how many were out compensating (that's the term we use here) weekend worked hours.
Later I included the possibility of a person be in two lines one for normal hours other for overtime. This is mainly used for planning purposes. If you would like I can send you an example. The only problem of this spreadsheet is that we don't have a person view, only this consolidated view.
Hi George, I would like to have a copy of your spreadsheet if you can share it.
Thanks in advance, Chuck
Hi Chandoo,
Where is the code located ? is it VBA ? If so , how do you hide it ? Or it is .NET ?
Thx
@Idan
.
No VBA or code, it is all done with Mirrors.
Only Joking,
.
But there is no VBA or code,
It is all done with Named Formulas and Lookups.
Have alook at the cells in the calander area and Named Formulas in the Formulas, Name Manager Tab.
How can i calculate between two or more different workbooks? Please, reply me as early as possible.
@Anand
Open the workbooks you want to link to
Start a formula = and click and change between workbooks as required.
You can use the View, Switch window menu to change workbooks mid formula
The format for using workbooks is
=[Workbook.xlsm]Sheet1!$A$1
or
=SUM('[Book2.xls]Sheet1'!$A$1:$D$10)
etc
Hi Chandoo,
I am working with a call centre wherein i ned to update at the month end 20 to 30 employees login hours which are defict to track it at the month end is very difficult is there any template which can be made to track that why on a particular day a guy who needs to be on calls was why not on calls.
Thank you so much Chandoo. This is really helping me. As usual, you rock.
What's FortyTwoDays and Calendar in Name manager?
Both are unused and FortyTwoDays doesn't make any sense.
I have a SQL db that contains records of events scheduled/completed on a particular date. Can this method ous building a calendar be used to display those events on the respective day?
Positively awesome!
I'm attempting to help a friend create a schedule for adult classes - and of course its not"paid help". Here is the scenario:
20 classes, instructor, room#, student class size, start date, number of class days (need to subtract weekends)
class
instructor
room
students
start
#days
PATH
karen
201
21
01/01/13
11
BILLING
jane
401
15
01/12/13
13
MEDISOFT
mike
301
11
01/25/13
9
he'd like to see these classes show up in different colors within the same month's calendar chart. He can draw it, but I'd like to see it done automatically through data, and I just can't visualize it, but I KNOW this will work - can you help?
Jan 🙂
Dear chandoo,
Try many way to download still can't access. Any way we want to try out 3 shifts with 3 guys in a group .eg Group A Morn, Group B Night and Group C Rest. And every each group must work on sunday to take turns. In fact we are security teams so that's why sunday is required to work. Pls guide and show how to put in the working calendar. Thank you in advance.
I've been trying to copy and/or recreate this to use in a workbook I'm doing for the transportation department I'm working for. I need to have the calendar on the first sheet in my document (it has graph's from data on another sheet). I'm trying to use it to track (with the conditional formatting) accidents and injuries. I've redone the conditional formatting to do 4 different accident types (no injury, near miss, OSHA recordable injury and work loss injury), but when I enter the formula's you have in the calendar portion where it says "DateOfFirst-FirstWeekDay" I can't figure out how you did that. Are you able to help?
I would like to use Excel to solve the following problem for a community work. I want to create a Driver schedule for a given month from a pool of volunteers for a community service. Each of these volunteers can drive only on specific days in a week. I would like to populate the driving schedule for each weekday with primary, secondary and tertiary drivers in a random fashion so that I do not overburden one person. I would greatly any help you can provide.
Hi chandoo,
Thanks for your valuable effort for create this template and let me know how to add multiple employees in the the Roaster.
Hi Chandoo,
This article on shift roaster is very helpful. Could you please let me know how i can use the same for n number of resources who work 24/7, considering their leaves and holidays?
Thanks,
Savitha
Hi Chandoo,
This article on shift roaster is very helpful to all. Could you please let me know how i can use the same if I want to add for some more shifts, since the color is not getting change if I add more shifts like 4,5 etc.,
Thanks,
Murali
nice post
How can I change the date to 2017 under Shift Data worksheet.
solution 1:
mydata=B2:C16
stoplist=E2:E8
=LET(RNG,A2:A16,SMR,C2:C16, F,(RNG=E2)+(RNG=E3)+(RNG=E4)+(RNG=E5)+(RNG=E6)+(RNG=E7)+(RNG=E8),SUM(SMR)-SUM(SMR*F))
=LET(RNG,A2:A16,SMR,C2:C16,RH,N(B2:B16=B2), F,(RNG=E2)+(RNG=E3)+(RNG=E4)+(RNG=E5)+(RNG=E6)+(RNG=E7)+(RNG=E8),TOT,SUM(SMR)-SUM(SMR*RH*F),SUM(SMR*RH)-SUM(SMR* RH*F))
ALTERNATE SOLUTION
=SUM(C2:C16)-SUM(FILTER(C2:C16,ISNUMBER(BYROW(A2:A16,LAMBDA(a,TOROW(SEARCH(a,E2:E8),2))))))
=SUM((B2:B16=B2)*(C2:C16))-SUM((ISNUMBER(BYROW(A2:A16,LAMBDA(a,TOROW(SEARCH(a,E2:E8),2))))*(B2:B16=B2)*(C2:C16)))
let
Source = Excel.CurrentWorkbook(){[Name="Table1"]}[Content],
#"Replaced Value" = Table.ReplaceValue(Source,null,";",Replacer.ReplaceValue,{"Column1"}),
#"Transposed Table" = Table.Transpose(#"Replaced Value"),
#"Removed Other Columns" = Table.SelectColumns(#"Transposed Table",{"Column1", "Column2", "Column3", "Column4", "Column5", "Column6", "Column7", "Column8", "Column9", "Column10", "Column11", "Column12", "Column13", "Column14", "Column15", "Column16", "Column17", "Column18", "Column19", "Column20", "Column21", "Column22", "Column23", "Column24", "Column25", "Column26", "Column27", "Column28", "Column29", "Column30", "Column31", "Column32", "Column33", "Column34", "Column35", "Column36", "Column37", "Column38", "Column39", "Column40", "Column41", "Column42", "Column43", "Column44", "Column45", "Column46", "Column47", "Column48", "Column49", "Column50", "Column51", "Column52", "Column53", "Column54", "Column55", "Column56", "Column57", "Column58", "Column59", "Column60", "Column61", "Column62", "Column63", "Column64", "Column65", "Column66", "Column67", "Column68", "Column69", "Column70", "Column71", "Column72", "Column73", "Column74", "Column75", "Column76", "Column77", "Column78", "Column79", "Column80", "Column81", "Column82", "Column83", "Column84", "Column85", "Column86", "Column87"}),
#"Merged Columns" = Table.CombineColumns(#"Removed Other Columns",{"Column1", "Column2", "Column3", "Column4", "Column5", "Column6", "Column7", "Column8", "Column9", "Column10", "Column11", "Column12", "Column13", "Column14", "Column15", "Column16", "Column17", "Column18", "Column19", "Column20", "Column21", "Column22", "Column23", "Column24", "Column25", "Column26", "Column27", "Column28", "Column29", "Column30", "Column31", "Column32", "Column33", "Column34", "Column35", "Column36", "Column37", "Column38", "Column39", "Column40", "Column41", "Column42", "Column43", "Column44", "Column45", "Column46", "Column47", "Column48", "Column49", "Column50", "Column51", "Column52", "Column53", "Column54", "Column55", "Column56", "Column57", "Column58", "Column59", "Column60", "Column61", "Column62", "Column63", "Column64", "Column65", "Column66", "Column67", "Column68", "Column69", "Column70", "Column71", "Column72", "Column73", "Column74", "Column75", "Column76", "Column77", "Column78", "Column79", "Column80", "Column81", "Column82", "Column83", "Column84", "Column85", "Column86", "Column87"},Combiner.CombineTextByDelimiter("|", QuoteStyle.None),"Merged"),
#"Split Column by Delimiter" = Table.ExpandListColumn(Table.TransformColumns(#"Merged Columns", {{"Merged", Splitter.SplitTextByDelimiter(";", QuoteStyle.Csv), let itemType = (type nullable text) meta [Serialized.Text = true] in type {itemType}}}), "Merged"),
#"Added Prefix" = Table.TransformColumns(#"Split Column by Delimiter", {{"Merged", each "|" & _, type text}}),
#"Replaced Value1" = Table.ReplaceValue(#"Added Prefix","||","|",Replacer.ReplaceText,{"Merged"}),
#"Split Column by Delimiter1" = Table.SplitColumn(#"Replaced Value1", "Merged", Splitter.SplitTextByDelimiter("|", QuoteStyle.Csv), {"Merged.1", "Merged.2", "Merged.3", "Merged.4", "Merged.5", "Merged.6", "Merged.7", "Merged.8"}),
#"Removed Columns" = Table.RemoveColumns(#"Split Column by Delimiter1",{"Merged.1"}),
#"Removed Duplicates" = Table.Distinct(#"Removed Columns")
in
#"Removed Duplicates"