Pivot table galore: online tutorials and texts

Yesterday a colleague of mine came up to me and asked me about online tutorials on pivot tables in Excel. This is a recurrent question, so it seemed like a good topic to blogpost about.

Some of the students of ITM are into statistics, and they use different programs, but one of the basic ones is Excel. Pivot tables are a useful feature and the question I get from time to time is whether there are online tutorials for pivot tables. That way the students can explore this excel feature at their own pace and space.

The excel lessons I like the best are tutorials from DataPig Technologies. A great company started by Mike Alexander who is a Microsoft Certified Application Developer (MCAD) and author of 8 books on advanced business analysis with Microsoft Access and Excel. I mean this guy definitely knows his business and … the basic tutorials are for free. The more specialized one are available for 25$ which is also a good bargain because you know they will be relevant.

If you are more of a reader and you want the information to be really related to the Excel 2007 version of the Microsoft software, you can look at this text (accompanied with screenshots) from Productivity Portfolio. It is quick and concise, which is completely tailored to their motto of ‘5 minute tips to learn’.

You might of course also want to take a look at the online courses Microsoft provides.

The text-based version for pivot tables in Excel 2007 (long but comprehensive)

The online tutorial with partial audio and partial reading (Nice, but I do not like the fact that the screen is divided and as such unpractical for reading through a tutorial. I seem to recall they had a better one, but where did it go?)

After you have followed the tutorial(s) and/or the texts you might still have some questions. Do not despair! There is a solid community of excel users that can put you on the right track with your problems. It’s an active community at that.

Looking for other pivot table related topics: look here.