From the course: Excel: PivotTables for Beginners

What is a PivotTable?

- [Narrator] Just what is a pivot table? A pivot table is a powerful analysis feature in Excel that lets you summarize a bunch of data in just a few clicks. Basically, it lets you take in a bunch of data like this and lets you summarize it like this, where you can see the total transactions for each person. Now, this is a fairly simple example. Here's a more complex example here, and in this case, it shows the type of purchases made and those transactions divided up by who purchased what. Your pivot tables don't necessarily have to be this complicated when starting out, but just know that this kind of thing is possible to do. And you might have also heard about a pivot chart. Here's an example. A pivot chart just visualizes the data, and in this case it's simply a bar chart, but the underlying data for this pivot chart is, you guessed it, a pivot table. Once you get the basics of pivot tables, pivot charts are pretty easy to use. We're not going to cover them in this course, but there's a bunch of other videos on the library that can explain how to make them. But once you get the hang of pivot tables, getting insights and answers is really easy, and once you grasp the basics, you'll be the envy of all your coworkers.

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