15. Using PivotTables

PICTURE YOURSELF USING A LIST OF RECORDS—any list that you have stored in Excel, such as a name and address list, a list of products in inventory, or, as I’ll use in the discussion throughout this chapter, a list of employees. Now picture yourself turning that list into a powerful, customizable report that you can use onscreen and/or print, that allows you to view the data from any number of useful perspectives, such as viewing only the employees in a given department, and adding the total salaries paid to them. If you can picture that—or better yet, picture a similar report based on your data—you’re well on your way to understanding and using PivotTables in Excel 2010.