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Excel Pivot Table Tutorial

Excel spreadsheets are handy tools for tracking and analyzing data. However, they do have some limitations. If you build a spreadsheet in a certain layout, it will often take a fair amount of time and work to provide alternate views of the data.

That’s where Pivot Tables come to the rescue. Pivot Tables allow you to take a large block of Excel data and slice & dice it in numerous useful ways. The best thing is that you don’t ever have to risk damaging your source data to produce these alternate views.

The spreadsheet below tracks product sales by day for a Fruit stand. We’ll see how a Pivot table can give us lots of different insights into this data.

Creating the Pivot Table from Existing Data

Go to the Insert tab and click the Pivot Table button.

The Create Pivot Table window will open.

You can pull  in data from an external source if you want, but typically you will just use the data in the sheet you are on.

You can also put the pivot table in the existing sheet or in a new one. It’s a little bit cleaner to put the pivot table in its own tab.

Click the OK button.

Your Pivot Table will open in a new tab. There will be no data displayed, but all of the fields in your original tab will be displayed in the Pivot Table Field List on the right side of the screen. You can arrange these fields in numerous useful combinations.

Drag the fields into their buckets at the bottom of the Pivot Table Field List.

Your Pivot Table’s data will be displayed based on your settings. The image below shows where the fields appear on the actual table.

The values in your table may need to have a particular number formatting. This data is money, so I’m going to set the format to Currency.

Click the Sum of Sales field in the Values box.

A menu will appear.

Select Value Field Settings from the menu.

The Value Field Settings menu will open.

You can change the Values to other formulas (count, average, etc.) if you need to.

Click the Number Format button.

The Format Cells menu will open.

Select Currency from the Category  list and click the OK button.

You will see the pivot table

Filtering and Sorting Your Data

The data in all of the fields in your new Pivot Table can be filtered and sorted to display or hide any data. Use the dropdown buttons on any field to pull up the Filter options.

You can sort the values of a field A to Z or Z to A or use more advanced options. Let’s see the Filtering options.

You will see all of the values for the selected field. You can check and uncheck any combination of values to show or hide those values. The field below contains all of the products in listed. I only want to see results for Apples and Oranges.

Check the values that you want to see and click the OK button.

Now you will only see those values (Apples and Oranges) displayed. You will also see the Filter icon displayed on the dropdown button.

Rearranging (Pivoting) Your data

You can completely rearrange the layout of the data on report by dragging the fields around the areas of the Pivot Table Fields List in the lower right corner of the screen. I currently have the report displaying Products down the rows and Days across the columns. I want the switch it so that the Days go down the rows and the Products go across the columns.

Drag the Day field into the Row Labels box and drag the Products field into the Column Labels field and click the Updated button.

Now you can see the report updated to the new layout.

Nesting Fields of Data

You can “nest” one field inside of another field in a pivot table. If you drag more than one field into one of the report areas the lower field will be grouped inside of the higher one.

Let’s see what it looks like if we move the Origin field above the Products field in the Column Labels area.

Drag Origin over and above Products and click the OK button.

You will see the values in the Origin field (Imported and Local) with the Imported or Local products grouped below.

You can drag the Products field ABOVE the Origin field to reverse the grouping.

Now you will see any Imported and Local data grouped inside of each Product.

This technique works the same way on the Row Labels.

Pulling in New Data

If you go back to the original worksheet where your source data is contained, you can make changes to the underlying data. You can have these changes reflected on your Pivot Table very easily.

Go back to the Pivot Table and right click in one of the cells.

An option menu will open.

Select Refresh.

The data in your pivot table will update to reflect any changes made in the underlying source data.

See the Video Tutorial for Using Excel Pivot Tables

The following video shows how to create and manipulate a Pivot Table in Microsoft Excel.

Excel Pivot Table Tutorial

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When you get a new computer or upgrade your old one to Windows 8, you are in for a jolt to the interface that you’ve come accustomed to. For starters, you don’t boot up to a Desktop. You start on the Metro screen.

The Metro screen uses Tiles that display information and launch applications. If you’re on a phone or tablet with a touch screen, this is a pretty handy way of navigating. However, many people do not like it as a way of navigating a desktop computer with a keyboard and mouse.

You can access the “Desktop” of Windows 8 by clicking the Desktop tile.

Windows 8 Does Not Have a Start Button

Once you reach the Desktop you will also be surprised to know that there is one very familiar thing missing. The Start button!

You’re not setting things, it’s just GONE. This is nuts. It drives me (and millions of others) crazy. I know that they wanted to break the mold, but some things have been around forever because they work.

How to Add a Start Button Back to Windows 8

Fortunately, there’s a quick, easy, free way to add that old familiar Start button back to Windows 8. Download ClassicShell from their website and install it on your computer.

Once you have ClassicShell installed, you can configure it to your liking.

Click the Start button to begin.

The Settings menu will open.

Start by selecting the style of your Start menu.

Then, click the Basic Settings tab.

There are many settings that you can make on this tab. Scroll to the bottom to Enable the Start Button. You can also check the Skip Metro screen box if you want to bypass it altogether. (My choice)

Then, click the Skin tab.

Configure the look and feel of the new Start menu.

Click the OK button.

That’s it, you have a fully functional Start button/menu just like previous versions of Windows.

See the Video Tutorial to See it in Action

The video tutorial below shows how to install, configure, and use ClassicShell to add a Start button back to Windows 8 and skip the Metro screen on Startup.

What do you think?

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OVERVIEW: This video tutorial shows how to use Google Voice to convert your speech to text that can be used in other applications. Use the feature that converts voicemail audio to text.

The Best Voicemail System Ever

Once you see the iPhone’s Visual Voicemail, you realize how cool it is. Well, Google Voice has actually one-upped them by adding the new voice transcription feature to what is already an incredible voicemail system. The audio for all of your messages is saved in an inbox that works just like an email inbox. This alone is pretty cool, but then they convert the message to text and put it in your inbox too. When you click the play button to hear the voicemail, the transcribed text is highlighted in sync with the audio. The words that are in black text are usually perfect, while the ones in gray are 50/50. They also send the text to your email, so that you can read the message without having to play it. This cuts hours and hours of blah, blah, blah time out of your life.

I have been using this feature when I come up with “good” ideas while I’m on the go. I just call my Google Voice number from my mobile phone and leave my idea as a message. Then, when I get home, I just copy and paste the transcribed text into Word, an Email, or whatever other application are applicable.

How to Use Google Voice’s Text Transcriptions with Other Apps

Just log in to your Google Voice account and go to the Inbox.

Once you call your Google Voice number and leave a voicemail, it will be saved in your inbox as an audio file. Google’s severs will also convert the audio in the voicemail to text.

The length of the voicemail will be displayed next to the Play button. The words that are in gray text (not black) are ones whose accuracy is “questionable”. You should double-check them for accuracy.

When you click the play button, the text gets highlighted in green along with the audio. (This is actually pretty cool.)

Now that your voicemail has been converted to text, you can copy and paste it into any application that you want.

See the Google Voicemail to Text Tutorial Below

The following video tutorial shows how to use the Google Voice audio transcription feature to use your messages as text.

Good, But Not Perfect

While this is a cool feature, it is FAR from perfect. I’m sure that there will be tweaks and upgrades down the road, but I’m really impressed with its humble beginnings. I would love to see some vocal training or learning features added, sort of like Dragon Naturally Speaking has had for years.

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Overview: This tutorial shows how to create a quick, simple, free Content Marketing Campaign to draw people to your product or service.

Content Marketing Tutorial Diagram

Every marketing site will tell you that “You have to do Content Marketing“. They all say how it’s the next great wave in attracting customers to your site, but precious few ever really SHOW you exactly how it’s done.This tutorial will show you how to quickly and easily execute a content marketing campaign for a page or product on your site.

Let’s say I have an Ebook that I want to sell. The Ebook contains a bunch of tips and tricks for using Microsoft Excel. I need a way to get visitors to my sales page and convert them to customers.

I will deploy a content marketing campaign that starts on my site and branches out to several social media locations. The campaign will use the following techniques:

• Blogging/Article Marketing
• Video Sharing
• Photo Sharing
• Document Sharing (Slides and Text)

Blogging / Article Marketing

I started by writing a very basic tutorial on how to do a Vlookup in Excel. This article has step-by-step instructions with screen shots that show how do this process. I placed a link in the article that goes to my Ebook sales page. I took the content and research for this article and repurposed it in several other quick and easy ways. I started out by recording a video screencast of the steps I covered in the article.

Video Sharing

I use a program called Camtasia by Techsmith ($300 Windows – $100 Mac). There are several free alternatives that you can also use. (http://alternativeto.net/software/camtasia-studio/) I took the video and shared it to sites like YouTube, 5min, x, x, etc. When I published the video I made sure to include a link back to the article with thorough title, description, and tags.

Finally, I embedded the video in the tutorial to make it that much more useful.

What does this do? Well, it puts a very useful/helpful piece of information out in the world that demonstrates my credibility and leads viewers directly back to my site.

Photo Sharing

Then I took the “feature image” from the article and share it on a number of image sharing sites like (Flickr, Picasa, Facebook, etc.) Again, when I publish the image on these sites I included a link back to the article with the accompanying title, description, and tags.Since I have a feature image for the article, I pinned the article on Pinterest. Make sure to include a graphic with text explaining the post in your Pinterest post. These really attract visitors well.

Document Sharing

Next, I took the text and images from my tutorial and pasted them into a PowerPoint presentation. Site’s like Slideshare have a ton of users looking for useful information. Make sure to add a link back to your site in TWO places: the description of the presentation and the footer of the slides. I also embedded the Slideshare presentation in the article to add even more value and interaction.There are a bunch of other places that you can post your slides: LinkedIn, Google Docs, Zoho, etc.

You can also take the information in you article and put it into a Word document that can be similarly shared on sites like Docstoc, Scribd, etc.

Finally, you can post links to your article (and all of the places you posted the content) on your Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and Tumblr profiles.

There you have it. We created one useful piece of content, then repurposed it into several smaller pieces that can be published all over the web. All of these little pieces point back to your home base which funnels visitors to your sales page where they can be turned into customers.

See the Content Marketing Vide Tutorial

See how it’s done in the video tutorial below.

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Over the years I have been the Excel tips guy in my office. There are so many amazing things that Excel can do, but the one thing I get asked more than every other feature combined is: “How do I do a Vlookup”. Mastery of the Vlookup seems to be the one Excel trick that people use to separate experts from novices. Well, guess what? It’s really not hard at all.

What Exactly is a Vlookup?

The Vlookup function in Excel is used to see if a value in one cell (or list of cells) is in another group of cells. (“V” is for vertical – you can use th Hlookup function to check horizontally too) Looks for a value in the leftmost column of a table, and then returns a value in the same row from a column you specify. Take a look at the data below. Column A has a list of people who have already paid their bill. Column B has a list of customers who received services. We want to find out which customers have paid and which still owe payments. This is a typical Vlookup scenario: compare two lists and identify the differences.

Naming a Range in Excel

Before you actually create your Vlookup formula, you should create a “Named Range”. Excel can take a range of cells and assign a name to it that can be referenced in functions and formulas throughout the workbook.

Select the range of cells that contain the values that you want to check against.

TIP: If you have a list of values that may be added to, select a range that is bigger than your existing list. This way, when the list grows, the new values will still be included in your named range. After you select your range of cells, you are ready to give it a name. Right click on the highlighted cells and select Name a Range from the menu.

The New Name menu will open. Type a name in the Name field. You can modify the actual range of cells (now or later) in the Refers to field.

Click the OK button.

Now you can refer to this range (Paid) anywhere in this workbook.

Creating the Vlookup Formula

Now that we have a range of data to check against, we are ready to build our formula.

Click to the right of the first value that you want to check.

Click the formula builder button (fx) to search for the Vlookup function.

Select the Lookup & Reference category and scroll down to the VLOOKUP function.

Click the OK button.

The Function Arguments wizard will open.

The Function Arguments wizard lists what the overall function does below the fields. When you click in one of the fields an explanation of what goes into that field is displayed. There are four fields to populate:

• Lookup Value
• Table Array
• Column Index
• Number Range Lookup

Click in the Lookup Value field and enter the cell for the value that you want to check against the range (B2 – Allan).

Click in the Table Array field and enter the name of the range that we want to search for the Lookup Value.

Type “paid” in the Table Array field to reference the named range of values. Notice how the values in the named range appear to the right of the Table Array field.

Click in the Column Index Number field.

The range that we named contained all of the values in one column (A). If we had a range of data that resided in more than one consecutive column, we could specify which column’s value that we wanted to return to the formula cell. Since we only have one column, type “1” in the field.

Click in the Range Lookup field.

There are two values that you can use in the Range Lookup field: TRUE or FALSE. True will find the “closest” value in the range and False will only find EXACT matches. Typically I want an exact match.

Type “FALSE” in the field and click the OK button.

If the value is in the range the value from column 1 will be displayed in our cell.

Extending the formula down the rest of the list

Just copy and paste the formula you built (C2) and paste it down the rest of the list.

All of the remaining values will be checked against the range.

If a value is not found “#NA” will be displayed. In our case, we will know that those people did not pay yet.

Since we made our named range a little bigger that the existing data, we can add more data to the empty cells in the range and have them rechecked.

The example below shows that as long as we type into the range that we created it will be included in the formulas that reference it.

Using a Multi Column Named Range to Extend your Vlookup

We used a single column range in the example above. Multi Column named ranges allow you to do some more interesting things with your Vlookups. I added an extra column to the spreadsheet that lists the amount that each person paid.

Then, I edited the range (Formulas tab> Name Manager> Select Paid> Edit button> Change range from “A29” to B29”)

This included the Amount column as the second column in the range. You can add several columns if you like. Now, when I find someone that already paid, I don’t want to return their name (I already know their name) I want to know how much they actually paid. (Column 2)

Reopen the Function Arguments wizard and click in the Column Index Number field.

Type “2” in the field and click the OK button.

Re-copy the formula down the list.

Now, you’ll see who paid, how much they paid, and who still owes money.

That’s it – you can do the Vlookup with the rest of the Excel gurus out there.

Excel VLOOKUP Video Tutorial

See how to do all of the steps listed above in this video tutorial:

Excel Pivot Table Tutorial

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