Excel table is a series of rows and columns with related data that is managed independently. Excel tables, (known as lists in Excel 2003) is a very powerful and super-cool feature that you must learn if your work involves handling tables of data.
What is an Excel table?
Table is your way of telling excel, “look, all this data from A1 to E25 is related. The row 1 has table headers. Right now we just have 24 rows of data. But I can add more later!”
When you make a table (more on this in a sec) you can easily add more rows to it without worrying about updating formula references, formatting options, filter settings etc. Excel will take care of everything thus making you a data guru.
How to create table from a bunch of data?
To create an excel table, all you have to do is select a range of cells and press the table button from Insert ribbon in Excel (or use the shortcut CTRL+T).
See this simple tutorial:
Today we will learn 10 excel data table tricks that will make you a data guru, no let’s make that DATA GURU.
The most important thing after you create a table – Give it a name
Once you have a table, go to design ribbon and give your table a name. If you don’t name it, Excel will call it Table2 or whatever. But once you name it, you can write meaningful formulas thru sweet sweet structural references feature. So name your tables.
1. Change table formatting without lifting a finger
Excel has some great predefined table formatting options. Just select any cell in your table and change the table formatting by going to “format as table” button in the home ribbon.
If you are bored with the predefined formats, you can easily define your own table formatting color schemes and apply them.
2. Add Zebra Lines to Tables without doing Donkey Work
When you create a table, zebra lines come as a bonus. And when you add new rows to the table, excel takes care of zebra lining or banding automatically. You can turn on / off the banded rows feature from “design ribbon tab” as well.
That means you don’t need to use conditional formatting or manually format alternative rows in different color.
3. Tables come with Data Filters and Sort Options by default
Each data table comes with filters and sorting options so that you can filter and sort the data in that table independently. That also means, if a worksheet has 2 tables, they each get their own data filters (usually excel wont allow you to add more than one set of filters per sheet, but when it comes to tables, all exceptions are made, just for you)
4. You can also Slice your tables with slicers
That is right. When you have a table of data, you can insert a slicer (either from design ribbon or insert ribbon) and use that to filter your table data intuitively.
Learn all about Excel Slicers.
5. Bye, bye cell references, welcome structured references
The most important advantage of tables is that, you can write meaningful looking formulas instead of using cell references. When you create and name the table (you can name the table from design tab), you can write formulas that look like this:
The beauty of structured references is that, when you add or remove rows, you don’t need to worry about updating the references.
Learn all about structural references in Excel.
6. Make Calculated Columns with ease
Any tabular data will have its share of calculated columns. Excel tables make having calculated columns very easy. With structured references, all you need to know is English to make a calculated column. The beauty of calculated columns in table is that, when you write formula in one cell, excel automatically fills the formula in the rest of cells in that column. That would make you an instant data guru.
7. Total your Tables without writing one formula
The ability to summarize data with pivot tables is extended to excel tables as well. You can add total row to your table with just a click.
What more, you can easily change the summary type from “sum” to say “average”.
8. Convert table back to a range, if you ever need to
If you ever wanted to go back to a normal range of data, you can easily convert the tables back to named ranges.
Excel will take care of the formulas and change the references to cell references.
9. Export Tables to Pivot Tables, Woohoo
What good is a bunch of data when you can’t analyze it? That is where Pivot tables come in to picture [pivot table tutorial]. Thankfully, you don’t need to do much. Just click a button and your table goes to pivot table.
10. Push the table data to Sharepoint Intranet Site
If you have a corporate intranet Sharepoint portal, you can easily publish the excel tables as share-point lists. This can be handy if you want to publish, say the top 10 sales persons of the quarter on the intranet.
11. Print Tables Alone, with out all the other stuff around
Select the table, hit CTRL+P and in settings area, select “Print Selected Table” option to print your beautifully formatted Excel table.
12. Change, reshape or clean your table data with Power Query
When you have data in a table, you can easily load it to Power Query (Get & Transform Data) using the “From Table” button.
Here is an an example of what Power Query can do for you.
13. Got multiple tables? Connect them to make a multi-table pivot
When you have more than one table, you can also connect them using Excel’s relationship feature. This way, you can build multi-table pivots to create powerful analysis of your data.
Learn all about Excel Table Relationships.
So, What do you think about Excel tables?
I say, give them a try. They have been around for more than a decade, but I still see people not using them. Setting up your data as a table is the easiest and most awesome thing you can do it. You can find some cool uses for tables in your day to day work. They are intuitive, easy to use and provide great power without added complexity.
Related Material
- Beginner:
- Advanced:
- More sources about tables:
13 Responses to “Using pivot tables to find out non performing customers”
To avoid the helper column and the macro, I would transpose the data into the format shown above (Name, Year, Sales). Now I can show more than one year, I can summarize - I can do many more things with it. ASAP Utilities (http://www.asap-utilities.com) has a new experimental feature that can easily transpose the table into the correct format. Much easier in my opinion.
David
Of course with alternative data structure, we can easily setup a slicer based solution so that everything works like clockwork with even less work.
David, I was just about to post the same!
In Contextures site, I remember there's a post on how to do that. Clearly, the way data is layed out on the very beginning is critical to get the best results, and even you may thinkg the original layout is the best way, it is clearly not. And that kind of mistakes are the ones I love ! because it teaches and trains you to avoid them, and how to think on the data structure the next time.
Eventually, you get to that place when you "see" the structure on the moment the client tells you the request, and then, you realized you had an ephiphany, that glorious moment when data is no longer a mistery to you!!!
Rgds,
Chandoo,
If the goal is to see the list of customers who have not business from yearX, I would change the helper column formula to :
=IF(selYear="all",sum(C4:M4),sum(offset(C4:M4,,selyear-2002,1,columns(C4:M4)-selyear+2002)))This formula will sum the sales from Selected Year to 2012.
JMarc
If you are already using a helper column and the combox box runs a macro after it changes, why not just adjust the macro and filter the source data?
Regards
I gotta say, it seems like you are giving 10 answers to 10 questions when your client REALLY wants to know is: "What is the last year "this" customer row had a non-zero Sales QTY?... You're missing the forest for the trees...
Change the helper column to:
=IFERROR(INDEX(tblSales[[#Headers],[Customer name]:[Sales 2012]],0,MATCH(9.99999999999999E+307,tblSales[[#This Row],[Customer name]:[Sales 2012]],1)),"NO SALES")
And yes, since I'm matching off of them for value, I would change the headers to straight "2002" instead of "Sales 2002" but you sort the table on the helper column and then and there you can answer all of your questions.
Hi thanks for this. Just can't figure out how you get the combo box to control the pivot table. Can you please advise?
Cheers
@Kevin.. You are welcome. To insert a combo box, go to Developer ribbon > Insert > form controls > combo box.
For more on various form controls and how to use them, please read this: http://chandoo.org/wp/2011/03/30/form-controls/
Thanks Chandoo. But I know how to insert a combobox, I was more referring to how does in control the year in the pivot table? Or is this obvious? I note that if I select the Selected Year from the PivotTable Field List it says "the field has no itens" whereas this would normally allow you to change the year??
Thanks again
worked it out thanks...
when =data!Q2 changes it changes the value in column N:N and then when you do a refreshall the pivottable vlaues get updated
Still not sure why PivotTable Field List says “the field has no itens"?? I created my own pivot table and could not repeat that.
Hi, I put the sales data in range(F5:P19) and added a column D with the title 'Last sales in year'. After that, in column D for each customer, the simple formula
=2000+MATCH(1000000,E5:P5)
will provide the last year in which that particular customer had any sales, which can than easily be managed by autofilter.
Somewhat longer but perhaps a bit more solid (with the column titles in row 4):
=RIGHT(INDEX($F$4:$P$19,1,MATCH(1000000,F5:P5)),4)
[…] Finding non-performing customers using Pivot Tables […]