Microsoft Excel: Data Analysis with PivotTables

Overview

Advances in technology have made it possible to store ever-increasing amounts of data. Along with this, the need to analyze data and gain actionable insight is greater than ever. You already have experience working with Microsoft® Excel® and creating basic PivotTables to summarize data. But Excel is capable of doing much more. Being able to harness the power of advanced PivotTable features and create PivotCharts will help you to gain a competitive edge. You will not only be able to summarize data for you to analyze, but also organize the data in a way that can be meaningfully presented to others. This leads to data-driven business decisions that have a better chance for success for everyone involved. This material will benefit users of any current Office version. The course environment setup is based on Excel for Office 365. Students taking this course are experienced Excel users who are seeking to advance their data analysis capabilities by using PivotTables. In this course, you will: prepare data for PivotTable reporting and create PivotTables from various data sources, analyze data by using PivotTables, and work with PivotCharts. This course requires that you have Microsoft Excel installed on a Windows PC. The course setup instructions provided in the first module of the course go into more detail about the hardware and software requirements.

Syllabus

Preparing Data and Creating PivotTables

Microsoft® Excel® is a powerful application for analyzing data. Trying to interpret information from large datasets can be daunting. PivotTables provide powerful ways to interact with data through easy-to-read formats and the ability to summarize large amounts of data quickly. This enables you to more easily analyze a large dataset and arrive at solid business decisions.

Analyzing Data by Using PivotTables

In many cases, a basic PivotTable can provide you with sufficient data summaries for your analysis, but what if you need to perform a more complex analysis? Suppose you need to filter your PivotTable, group certain data together, alter its formatting, or analyze data from multiple sources. Now that you have created a basic PivotTable, you are ready to dive deeper into your data analysis.

Working with PivotCharts

You have explored how PivotTables enable you to present business intelligence information quickly and easily from multiple sources. This data can help organizations make well-informed decisions and solve problems based on solid business analytics. Yet as powerful as PivotTables are, users often don't have time to absorb what all the numbers are showing. Leadership especially needs the ability to make decisions quickly. By presenting PivotTable data graphically through PivotCharts, you can help users tell at a glance what the data is showing. The graphical interface makes it easy to notice patterns and trends. This can greatly reduce the time it takes to make important business decisions.