Microsoft Excel is a popular construction estimating tool, but its ability to hold data in massive charts can also be its undoing. This is where a Microsoft Excel PivotChart tutorial could come in handy, for users old and new alike.
PivotCharts begin with the PivotTable. Such a table lets a user reorganize and then summarize various rows and columns in a spreadsheet, particularly a large one. It is so named because to pivot means to turn the data as a means of viewing it differently. The Microsoft Office Online documents Create a PivotTable report and PivotTable reports 101 do offer some helpful PivotTable tutorials, but they don't solve the data visualization problem -- that is, the data remains in rows and columns.
Enter Excel 2007 Charts Made Easy. Chapter 12 of this book, Creating a PivotChart, shows readers how to take the data from a PivotTable and create a PivotChart. The authors begin by explaining how to format a table, or data list, so that it can be turned first into a PivotTable and then into a PivotChart. (This process is quite a bit easier in Excel 2007 than it was in previous versions, the authors note.)
This PivotChart tutorial goes on to demonstrate how to create filters, which can be defined by rule or by selection, and how to add fields to those filters. The chapter ends with a discussion of the types of PivotCharts that one can use (hint: it's a lot more than bar graphs) and when it is appropriate to use one chart type instead of another.
Readers of ConstructionSoftwareReview.com can download Chapter 12 of Excel 2007 Charts Made Easy. To download the PDF, click on the link above -- left-click to open the document now and right-click to save the file and read it later.
*** Excerpted from Excel 2007 Charts Made Easy (ISBN: 9780071600064) by Kathy Jacobs, Curt Frye and Doug Frye. Copyright 2008. Published by McGraw-Hill Professional. Reprinted with permission.