Pivots 01: How to format an Excel data list

Video Lesson 1

The raw data and how to format it

More than 7,000 lines of weather data for every 30 minutes over a 5 month period and we show you how to format in Date/Time layouts and numbers to show same decimal points and made easier to read.

What is the data, and why format?:

The first requirement to make a Pivot table is a data list from which the pivots “pull” the information into the table(s) and create overviews and summaries.

The list consists of one or more columns and each one has a text header, indicating what the data below it is.

In our example it is weather data, and the column headers each indicate what type of weather data we have: like the time, the amount of rain, the temperature, etc.

We start with the raw data and when we look at it, the date/time data seems to make no sense because they appear to be numbers.

So we will format the data in order to make it readable – even if we might not look much at the original information once we have our Pivot tables created.

Quick links to Lessons:

pivots01 - the raw waether data
pivots01 - the raw data

Want to download the Template?

You can follow in the Excel spreadsheet if you like. It is a relatively small zip file of 3.8 MB:

Pivots01-04_Template