Microsoft Office

Analyzing Data with Pivot Tables 35
Grouping Pivot Table Items
One of the most useful features of a pivot table is the ability to combine items into groups. You can group
items that appear as Row Labels or Column Labels. Excel offers two ways to group items:
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Manually: After creating the pivot table, select the items to be grouped and then choose
PivotTable Tools ➪ Options ➪ Group ➪ Group Selection. Or, you can right-click and choose
Group from the shortcut menu.
Automatically: If the items are numeric (or dates), use the Grouping dialog box to specify how
you would like to group the items. Select any item in the Row Labels or Column Labels and then
choose PivotTable Tools ➪ Options ➪ Group ➪ Group Selection. Or, you can right-click and
choose Group from the shortcut menu. In either case, Excel displays its Grouping dialog box.
A manual grouping example
Figure 35.3 shows the pivot table example from the previous sections, with two groups created from the
Row Labels. To create the first group, I held the Ctrl key while I selected Arizona, California, and
Washington. Then I right-clicked and chose Group from the shortcut menu. I repeated the operation to create
the second group. Then I replaced the default group names (Group 1 and Group 2) with more meaningful
names (Eastern Region and Western Region).
FIGURE 35.3
A pivot table with two groups and subtotals for the groups.
You can create any number of groups and even create groups of groups.
Viewing grouped data
Excel provides a number of options for displaying a pivot table, and you may want to experiment with these
options when you use groups. These commands are on the PivotTable Tools ➪ Design tab of the Ribbon.
There are no rules for these options. The key is to try a few and see which makes your pivot table look the
best. In addition, try various PivotTable Styles, with options for banded rows or banded columns. Often, the
style that you choose can greatly enhance readability.
Figure 35.4 shows pivot tables using various options for displaying subtotals, grand totals, and styles.
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