In such a case, you may have no choice but to convert the data into a Pivot friendly data format. Sometimes, you may get a dataset that is unsuitable to be used as the source data for Pivot Table. Converting a Badly Formatted Data into Pivot Table Ready Source Data There are blank cells in the data set and the quarters are spread as column headers.Īlso, the region is specified at the top, while it should be a part of every record. But it can’t be used to create a Pivot Table. This again is an output that can easily be obtained using a Pivot Table. So even if you eventually want such a look for your data, maintain the source data in a Pivot ready format and create this view using the Pivot Table. This data representation may be received well by management and the audience of PowerPoint presentations, but it’s not suitable for creating a Pivot Table.Īgain, this is the kind of summary that you can easily create using a Pivot Table. If you go ahead and create a Pivot Table using this (which you can), you will get different fields for different quarters.If you have each record available in a separate row, you can do a better analysis. But is it a single sale, or a number of sales. For example, you can see the sales for Mid West in Quarter 1 is 2924300. This is a common way to maintain data as it easy to follow and comprehend. There are two problems with this data arrangement: Let’s have a look at some bad examples of source data designs. You can simply refresh the Pivot Table and it would automatically account for the new rows added to the source data. If you add more rows to the data set, you don’t need to adjust the source data again and again. The benefit with Excel Table is that it can adjust the expanding data. Your Pivot Table would work just fine with a source data that isn’t an Excel Table as well. This is more of a good practice and not a pitfall. Always create an Excel Table and then use it as the source for a Pivot Table.Once you have the Pivot Table, you can easily get these later.
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