Seems like it’s been eons since I posted an Excel tutorial, so I thought I’d write a brief intro on how to create pivot tables in Excel. Pivot tables are unnecessarily mysterious and perplexing to many people, but as you’ll soon see, they’re easy to set up and a convenient way to look at spreadsheet data once you get the hang of it. There are multiple ways to set up a pivot table, but this tutorial goes through how I usually do it, and the method works for both Excel 2007 and 2003.

First, suppose we have the data below, which shows two managers, their employees, and the number and amount of sales each employee made in 2008 and 2009:

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As I think I mentioned a few posts ago, there are a lot of changes going on at work. Earlier this year, I had set a goal of trying something different by the end of the year. Well, it’s now Q4, and I’ve decided to move out of my current role in the company’s Finance department and into one of their Operations divisions, allowing me to be closer to the company’s business and products, where I’ve wanted to be for a long time.

Don’t worry — I don’t think this will have one iota of impact on the content of this blog, be it on value investing, personal finance, or Excel tutorials. The role I’ll be taking will still require analytical skills, and I wouldn’t have taken it if I didn’t think I’d learn from it.

Guess that means I should to edit my “About” page too :)