Excel Video 380 starts our discussion of Tables in Excel 2013. Tables are different than the Pivot Tables you’ve heard me talk a lot about. We’ll start by simply creating tables. If you already have a Pivot Table, creating a table is easy, simply double click the Pivot Table cell where you want to see the detail. Excel shows the detail in a Table format.
If you don’t have your data in a Pivot Table, just select one of the cells in the data where you want to add a table and click Format as Table from the Home tab in the Ribbon. Excel will look at the data and come back with a screen that estimates your complete data range and also tries to determine if your data has a top row with headers in it that Excel can use for column headings. Note that Excel does best at determining your data range if your data does not have blank rows, columns, or cells. If you do have blank rows, columns, or cells, be sure to double-check Excel’s suggested range. You can always click the red arrow in the Format as a Table window to enter the range.
Tables have filtering and sorting ability similar to Pivot Tables. You’ll also find some additional really useful features that are unique to Tables. We’ll start reviewing some of those features in Excel Video 381.
