Excel Pivot Table Tutorial -- Grouping Data

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Download the zipped sample file for this Excel Amazon.com pivot table tutorial View the steps in a short Pivot Table
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In an Excel Pivot Table, you can group the items in a Row or Column field. For example, items in a date field can be grouped by month, and items in a number field can be grouped by tens.

To group the items in a Date field 1. Right-click the Date field button. 2. Choose Group and Show Detail | Group

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Excel Pivot Table Tutorial -- Grouping Data

http://www.contextures.com/xlpivot07.html

3. In the Grouping dialog box, select one or more options from the 'By' list. 4. To limit the dates that are grouped, you can set a Start and End date, by typing the dates in the 'Starting at' and 'Ending at' boxes 5. Click OK to close the dialog box.

To group the items in a Date field by week 1. Right-click the Date field button. 2. Choose Group and Show Detail | Group 3. In the Grouping dialog box, select Days from the 'By' list. 4. For 'Number of days', select 7 5. The week range is determined by the date in the 'Starting at' box, so adjust this if necessary. In the example at right, December 29, 2003 (a Monday), was entered as the starting date. 6. Click OK

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Excel Pivot Table Tutorial -- Grouping Data

http://www.contextures.com/xlpivot07.html

The Grouping dialog box isn't available if you try to group items in a text field. Instead, you can manually group the items. 1. Select the items that you want to group 2. On the Ribbon's Options tab, click Group, then click Group Selection To rename the group: 1. Click on the heading cells with the default name, e.g. Group1 2. Type a new name.

If you try to group a date or number field, you may see an error message that says, "Cannot group that selection." This problem usually occurs when the field contains records with a blank date/number field, or text in a date/number field. To fix the problem For blank cells, fill in the date/number (use a dummy date/number if necessary). If there is text in the date/number field, remove it. If numbers are being recognized as text, use one of the techniques to change text to real numbers. Then return to this pivot table tutorial, and try the grouping steps. If you don't have blank cells or text in the date column, there may be a

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Excel Pivot Table Tutorial -- Grouping Data

http://www.contextures.com/xlpivot07.html

grouped field left over from the previous time that you grouped the data. 1. Check the field list, to see if there's a second copy of the date field, e.g. Date2. 2. If there is, add it to the row area, and ungroup it. 3. Then, you should be able to group the date field again.

In an Excel pivot table, you may want to know how many unique customers placed an order for an item, instead of how many orders were placed. A pivot table won't calculate a unique count. However, you could add a column to the database, then add that field to the pivottable. For example, to count the unique occurences of a Customer/Item order, add a column to your database, with the heading 'CustItem' In the first data row, enter a formula that refers to the customer and item columns. For example: =IF(SUMPRODUCT(($A$2:$A2=A2)* ($C$2:$C2=C2))>1,0,1) Copy the formula down to all rows in the database. Then, add the field to the data area of the Excel pivot table. In this example, you can see that nine unique customers placed an order for binders, and there were 14 orders for binders.

If you create two pivot tables based on the same Excel Table in Excel 2007, when you change the grouping in one pivot table,

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Excel Pivot Table Tutorial -- Grouping Data

http://www.contextures.com/xlpivot07.html

the same grouping appears in the other pivot table. Because you created the two pivot tables from the same source data, by default they use the same pivot cache, the grouped items are the same in both tables. To use different grouping in each pivot table, you'll need to create a separate pivot cache for each pivot table. Use the following method, suggested in the Excel newsgroups by Dave Peterson. To create a separate pivot cache for the second pivot table: 1. Cut the second pivot table, and paste it into a new workbook. 2. Change the grouping of the second pivot table. 3. Cut the second pivot table from the new workbook, and paste it back into the original workbook.
Download the zipped sample file for this Excel pivot table tutorial

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Excel Pivot Table Tutorial -- Grouping Data

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Debra Dalgleish

Last updated: August 21, 2010 8:39 PM

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