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Pivot Table Concept and Layout 2003
Excel 2003 Concept and Layout
An important point to remember when working with Pivot Tables is that you are working within a layout slightly different to a normal Excel worksheet. A Pivot Table has its own toolbar and that alone provides functionality specific to the Pivot Table and not to a normal Excel cell on the worksheet.
Although one can format a cell using the format menu, a Pivot Table provides its own format cells option on its toolbar as it is treated as a separate entity.
A Pivot Table has its own layout and is split up into 4 sections. With reference to the diagrams below you can see the layouts in two different ways. The one on the left being the layout which is visible on the Excel worksheet, the one on the right being the same layout but with its appearance when working within the Pivot Table Wizard.
Layout as per a Pivot Table Layout as per the
displayed on a worksheet Pivot Table wizard
Each of the above sections are used to show fields from the Pivot Table source data, each section having its own purpose.
| The Row Area | One would place fields in this section when wanting to group the data by a specific field. E.g. by Customer. Your customers will appear in the rows going down. |
| The Data Area | One would normally place fields in this section where their values are numbers such as a amount field e.g. Customer Sales. Calculations such as sum, average, min, max etc can be used on such fields. This section has to contain at least one field. |
| The Column Area | One would place fields in this section when wanting to group the data by a specific field e.g. by customer. Your customers will appear in the columns going across |
| The Page Area | This section assists in providing a third dimension to your data. It can also provide a more summarized/filtered view of the rest of the fields displayed in the other sections. When placing a field in this section it therefore reduces the number of items within a Pivot Table and in some instances prevents the Pivot Tables number of items limitation from being reached. |