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Excel Pivot Tables and Pivot Charts - Complete Guide
Role Play
Rating: 4.5 out of 5(2,729 ratings)
9,323 students

Excel Pivot Tables and Pivot Charts - Complete Guide

Turn thousands of rows into the answers your manager asks for. Build PivotTables, charts and dashboards in Excel.
Role Play
Created byIan Littlejohn
Last updated 8/2026
English
English [Auto],French [Auto],

What you'll learn

  • Build a PivotTable from a raw data export and turn thousands of rows into a one-page summary report
  • Set your data up correctly first, so your PivotTable returns the right number - the step most Excel users skip
  • Group dates into months, quarters and years to show trends, and build trend charts a manager can read at a glance
  • Filter with slicers that drive several PivotTables from a single click, so one selection updates the whole report
  • Create percentages, running totals, difference-from and ranking calculations using Show Value As, with no formulas
  • Use conditional formatting with rules, icons, data bars and color scales to make the numbers say something
  • Run frequency analysis on Human Resources data to answer questions like how many staff fall into each salary band
  • Build two complete interactive dashboards from an empty sheet - one for Human Resources, one for Finance
  • Practice on nine hands-on activities with downloadable data files, each with a full walkthrough of the answer

Course content

10 sections • 69 lectures • 4h 27m total length

  • Introduction to the Course1:54

    Introduction to the course

  • About the Course1:23

    Set video quality to the highest setting for full hd playback, and check your internet if issues arise. Use Udemy support for certificates and adjust playback speed to your pace.

  • Download the course data files0:05
  • Correctly Setup Data7:36

    Set up your data as a table with named columns and each record. Avoid subtotals and grand totals; maintain consistent data types, trim spaces, and store dates as Excel dates.

  • Welcome to Udemy Role Play0:35
  • Discuss the data analysis project for the Sales department

Requirements

  • Microsoft Excel 2016 or later, or Microsoft 365. Excel 2016 and 2019 reached end of support in October 2025, so Microsoft 365 is recommended
  • The course is recorded in Excel for Windows. PivotTables work in Excel for Mac, but the ribbon layout differs in places in Excel and do basic reporting
  • Excel for the web has a reduced PivotTable feature set. If that is the version you use, take Complete Introduction to Excel Online Pivot Tables in 3 Hrs instead
  • You should be able to enter data, write a basic formula and build a simple chart in Excel. No PivotTable experience is needed
  • No Microsoft 365 Copilot license is required. Everything in this course is built with standard Excel features

Description

This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.

Every lesson in this course is written, created and recorded by me. AI is used only to help produce supporting images and written materials around the lessons.


Your manager asks which region is growing, which product is falling behind, and how this quarter compares to last. The data is sitting in a spreadsheet with thousands of rows. Answering by hand takes an afternoon, and the answer is stale by Friday.

A PivotTable answers all three in about a minute, and it refreshes next month with one click.

This course teaches you to do exactly that, in the version of Excel already on your desk. No formulas. No VBA. No add-ins.

WHAT MAKES THIS COURSE DIFFERENT

I teach the analysis, not the tool. Every section opens with a business question a manager actually asks - which products contribute most to revenue, how are sales trending, how many staff sit in each salary band - and then shows you how to answer it. You get the technique and the reason to reach for it.

You will also start where most PivotTable courses do not: setting your data up correctly. This is the single most common reason a PivotTable returns the wrong number, and it is the first thing we cover.

WHAT YOU WILL BUILD

  • Creating PivotTables - from a raw data export to a summary report, working with multiple dimensions and multiple measures.

  • Methods of aggregation and grouping - sums, counts and averages, custom groups, and formatting that makes a table readable.

  • Trend and date analysis - grouping dates into months, quarters and years, and building trend charts that show direction at a glance.

  • Filtering and Top 10 analysis - report filters, and slicers that drive several PivotTables from one click.

  • Show Value As calculations - percentages, running totals, difference from and ranking, with no formulas.

  • Frequency analysis - answering "how many fall into each band" on real Human Resources data.

  • Conditional formatting - rules, Top 10 highlighting, icons, data bars and color scales.

  • Two complete interactive dashboards - a Human Resources dashboard and a Finance dashboard, built from an empty sheet.

  • Nine hands-on practical activities with downloadable data files. Every one has a full video walkthrough, so you try it yourself and then watch the answer.

ABOUT THE TRAINER

I have been training business people to work with data since 2008, and teaching on Udemy since 2013 - sixteen courses, more than 398,000 learners and more than 139,000 reviews at an average rating of 4.6.

I specialize in teaching business users to turn data into information they can act on, using Microsoft Excel, Copilot in Excel, Microsoft Power BI, Looker Studio and Amazon QuickSight.

WHAT STUDENTS ARE SAYING

"Yes, really like Ian's teaching style. Very effective."

"The course was exactly what I needed. Amount of information, pacing, and tutorials were all appropriate to the level."

"The step by step instructions were very helpful and easy to follow along with."

READY TO START?

Download the data file, open Excel, and build your first PivotTable in the next fifteen minutes. I will see you in lesson one.

Who this course is for:

  • Excel users who wantExcel users who are comfortable with basic formulas but have never built a PivotTable, and are tired of summarizing data by hand to learn how to create professional reports
  • Excel users who want to summarize and aAnalysts and finance, HR or operations staff who use PivotTables occasionally and have never been shown grouping, Show Value As, slicers or dashboardsggregate data
  • Excel users who waManagers and business users who need a monthly report they can refresh in seconds instead of rebuilding it every monthnt to learn new methods and techniques to analyze data
  • Excel desktop users specifically - if you work mainly in Excel for the web, Complete Introduction to Excel Online Pivot Tables in 3 Hrs covers this ground for that version
  • Anyone who wants PivotTables on their own - if you want the wider data analysis methodology with Copilot in Excel alongside PivotTables, Introduction to Business Data Analysis with Excel Copilot AI is the deeper course

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