Introduction

IN THIS INTRODUCTION

What You Will Learn from This Book

Skills Required to Use This Book

The Invention of the Pivot Table

Conventions Used in This Book

Pivot tables are the single most powerful feature in all of Excel. They came along during the 90s when Microsoft and Lotus were locked in a bitter battle for dominance of the spreadsheet market. The race to continually add enhanced features to their respective products during the mid-90s led to many incredible features, but none as powerful as the pivot table.

With a pivot table, you can take 65,000 rows of transactional data and transform it into a summary report in seconds. If you can drag a mouse, you can create a pivot table. In addition to quickly summarizing and calculating data, pivot tables allow you to change your analysis on the fly by simply dragging fields from one area of a report to another.

There is simply no other tool in Excel that gives you the flexibility and analytical power that pivot tables can give you.