A pivot table is an interactive summary built from a table of data. You choose which fields become rows, columns and values, and the tool groups the records and calculates sums, counts, averages or other aggregates, which you can rearrange freely.
Why it matters
A sales export with thousands of lines is hard to read, but a pivot table can show revenue by region and month in seconds. It lets non-programmers do the kind of grouping that SQL does with GROUP BY, and the layout can be changed by dragging fields rather than rewriting formulas.
Example
Source data has columns Region, Month and Revenue. Place Region in Rows, Month in Columns and Revenue in Values (Sum):
Jan Feb Mar
North 1200 1500 1100
South 900 950 1300Each cell is the total of all source rows matching that region and month.
Common mistakes
- Forgetting to refresh. A pivot table does not update automatically when the source data changes in most programs.
- Source data with blank rows, merged cells or missing headers, which confuses the field detection.
- Summing a field that holds text-formatted numbers, which are counted instead of added.
Related
Get notified when this term updates
Plus occasional practical tips on uptime and monitoring, nothing else. Unsubscribe anytime.
This page is general information written by our editorial team and updated when documentation changes. Servers and providers differ, so test changes safely first. See our editorial policy and disclaimer.