The first step to mastering any skill is understanding the fundamental concepts that make it work. Anyone can follow instructions, but unless you have a solid grasp of what’s going on behind the scenes, you won’t be able to harness the full potential of PivotTables.

So, how does a PivotTable really work?

In a nutshell, each individual cell is calculated independently based on its “coordinates” — defined by the rows, columns, and filters in your table. Using those coordinates, Excel drills down to that specific “slice” of raw source data, applies some sort of summarization (sum, count, average, max, etc.), and displays the result.

Pro tip: double click on any cell in your pivot to reveal the source data used to calculate its value

Now when it comes time to start exploring your data, the field list is your best friend. Think of the field list as your PivotTable “command center”, where you can assemble your data, set up filters and segments, and control the exact layout of your table by simply dragging and dropping your fields.

This is a great way to explore high-level trends and compare segments of your data, and expose the patterns and trends worth digging deeper into.

One thing that makes analytics so challenging is that insights often lurk just beneath the surface, yet remain virtually invisible until the data is broken down in an extremely specific way.

The good news? This is where PivotTables shine. Pivots allow you to apply custom segments and filters to your data, create calculated fields and metrics, and convert raw values into percentages, running totals, ranks or indices with the click of a button (no formulas or functions required!)

Let’s say you’re looking at sales data for a national manufacturer and searching for opportunities to cut costs. With PivotTables, you could break your data down by individual products or product categories, add calculated fields to compare margins and identify low-performers, cross-filter by geographic region to understand where certain products sell best, or explore trended sales to see which products may be losing momentum — all in a matter of minutes.

The bottom line? PivotTables are incredibly flexible and efficient tools for translating mountains of raw data into meaningful and intelligent insights.

How many times do you almost have the data you need, but not quite in the right format? Pivots allow you to instantly reshape and reorganize your data into any form you choose, without the tedious manual effort usually required (like aggregating rows to eliminate unnecessary fields).

Let’s say you decide to change which dimensions to feature in your table. Instead of wrestling with your source data by adding or removing fields, Pivots let you create new tables and custom layouts so that you can build the exact view that you need in a format that can serve as a brand new data source, with only a few clicks of the mouse.

It’s perfect for rolling up your data to a higher level of granularity, excluding extraneous fields, or generating source data for custom charts and graphs.

Data analysis and data visualization go hand in hand. Thanks to conditional formatting (which happens to be one of my all-time favorite Excel features!), you can easily draw attention to key trends and important patterns inside of your PivotTable.

Instantly bring your data to LIFE with conditional formatting rules like color scales, data bars and icon sets, which draw the eye towards meaningful trends and expose insights otherwise hidden in the noise.

Why is this important? The human brain has evolved to seek out and interpret patterns, so visual cues like conditional formatting only help to clarify and strengthen the story you’re trying to tell.

Pro Tip: Build cool, custom heat maps using a combination of color scales and invisible text. Use a custom number format (;;) to make overlying text invisible and instantly identify “hot” and “cold” spots in your data!

If you want to really impress a crowd, learn how to create dynamic dashboards using PivotTables and PivotCharts.

It’s as simple as creating a PivotTable view, linking it to a PivotChart, and adding slicers and timelines that users can interact with to filter and explore the data. This is one of the simplest ways to build robust, interactive dashboards in Excel, and you can do it without writing a single formula.

Feeling even more ambitious? Link your Pivot to a database, then sit back and watch your dashboard update with the click of a button. Say goodbye to the tedious task of copying data and hard-coding numbers — you’ve just built a fully automated solution!