MS Excel 2016: How to Create a Pivot Table

This Excel tutorial explains how to create a pivot table in Excel 2016 (with screenshots and step-by-step instructions).

See solution in other versions of Excel:

What is a Pivot Table?

A pivot table is a tool that allows you to quickly summarize and analyze data in your spreadsheet.

You can use a pivot table when:

You want to arrange and summarize your data.
The data in your spreadsheet is too large and complex to analyze in its original format.

Microsoft Excel

If you want to follow along with this tutorial, download the example spreadsheet.

To create a pivot table in Excel 2016, you will need to do the following steps:

Before we get started, we first want to show you the data for the pivot table. In this example, the data is found on Sheet1.
Highlight the cell where you'd like to create the pivot table. In this example, we've selected cell A1 on Sheet2.
Next, select the Insert tab from the toolbar at the top of the screen. In the Tables group, click on the Tables button and select PivotTable from the popup menu.
A Create PivotTable window should appear. Select the range of data for the pivot table and click on the OK button. In this example, we've chosen cells A1 to F16 in Sheet1 as indicated by Sheet1!$A$1:$F$16.

Your pivot table should now appear as follows:
Next, choose the fields to add to the report. In this example, we've selected the checkboxes next to the Order ID and Quantity fields.
Next in the Values section, click on the "Sum of Order ID" and drag it to the Rows section.
Finally, we want the title in cell A1 to show as "Order ID" instead of "Row Labels". To do this, select cell A1 and type Order ID.

Your pivot table should now display the total quantity for each Order ID as follows:

Congratulations, you have finished creating your first pivot table in Excel 2016!