When you first begin working with PivotTables, you start to identify some common patterns — numerical fields go in the Values pane, text-based dimensions go into Filters, Rows or Columns, and so on. And while those patterns hold true in many cases, there are some incredibly interesting things you can do by thinking outside the box.

In this tip we’ll pull wine prices (a numerical field) into our rows pane and wine names (a text field) into our values pane, and use grouping tools to analyze the frequency of wines that fall into each price range.

COMMON USE CASES:

• Analyzing the count or frequency of observations that fall into specific “bins” of values
• Creating high-level summary tables or charts from granular data