Are PivotTables really that useful?

Do you dread month end? Compiling the same reports, month after month, using outdated spreadsheet technology and complicated formulas which break and cost precious time to fix? Do you find yourself spending hours manually manipulating huge volumes of data to extract the information you’re looking for?

 I’ve been working with Excel PivotTables for the past 20 or so years and it never fails to amaze me how many seasoned Excel users still don’t fully understand them or have actively avoided them because they seem complicated to learn. The reality is that they’re actually really simple to use and once you’ve mastered them, can improve productivity by up to 80%! I’ve seen so many people have their lives changed by learning how to work smarter, and using the technology to do the work for them instead of doing all the work themselves.

WHAT IS A PIVOT TABLE?

A pivot table is one of the most powerful tools you can use. It’s an easy and simple way to display, understand, and analyse large data sets. They summarize and reorganize selected columns and rows of data in a spreadsheet or database table to help you better understand what your data is telling you. It does not actually change the original spreadsheet or database, it simply “pivots” or turns the data so it can be viewed from different perspectives.

There are four main components of a pivot table, filters, columns, rows and values.

WHAT ARE THE KEY BENEFITS OF USING PIVOT TABLES?

Pivot tables make creating reports simple. Instead of manually manipulating and working through your data row by row or column by column, you can work much more efficiently by using a pivot table to group data into categories, count the number of items in each category, and add the item’s value in just a few clicks of your mouse. They are simple and flexible. There are no complex formulas! Pivot tables use simple drag and drop technology and because of this, you can quickly and easily rearrange how your data is displayed to meet your every changing needs. There are so many ways you can filter your data and change the data sets you want to display, and any graphs or charts associated with the data will also be updated.

HISTORY OF PIVOT TABLES

Just for fun, I thought I’d share their history too. The concept originated in 1987, when Lotus Development Corporation released a revolutionary spreadsheet program called Lotus Improv. Steve Jobs saw big potential in the program and wanted it developed as part of his NeXT computer platform and in 1991 Lotus Development released Improv on the NeXT platform. A few months after the release of Improv, Brio Technology published a standalone Macintosh implementation, called DataPivot (with technology eventually patented in 1999). In 1992, Borland purchased the DataPivot technology and implemented it in Quattro Pro, their own spreadsheet application, and a version for Windows was also introduced. Two years later Microsoft picked up on the concept and in 1994 it was included in release of Excel 5. A few years after that, with the release of Excel 97, Microsoft went on to offer an enhanced pivot table wizard with key improvements to the pivot table functionality. Microsoft then introduced the pivot chart with Excel 2000, providing a way to graphically represent pivot tables. Since then, a number of competing software programs have provided similar functionality.  Google introduced the creation of a basic pivot table in Google Docs before announcing the roll-out of an improved pivot table feature in Google Sheets in May 2011. Although pivot table is a generic term, Microsoft held a trademark on the term in the United States from 1994 to 2020.