Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. If you are using an earlier version (Excel 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Excel, click here: Counting with PivotTables.

Counting with PivotTables

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated March 8, 2024)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021

Suppose you have a data table set up in Excel that represents your club membership. In the first column are the names of club members. In the second column are the cities in which the members live. If you want to find out how many people live in each city, there are several methods you can choose. One method is to create a PivotTable.

To create a PivotTable on your data, follow these steps:

  1. Select a cell within your data table.
  2. Make sure the Insert tab of the ribbon is displayed.
  3. In the Tables group, click the PivotTable tool.
  4. Excel displays the Create PivotTable dialog box. (See Figure 1.)

    5. Figure 1. The Create PivotTable dialog box.

  5. In the Range box, make sure your entire data table is selected, then click on OK. Excel creates an empty PivotTable worksheet.
  6. Drag the City field from the field list to the Row Labels area.
  7. Drag the Name field from the field list to the Values area. Your PivotTable is complete.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (6160) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Counting with PivotTables.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Using Dot Leaders in a Paragraph

Adding dot leaders to your text is easy through the application of tab stops. This tip explains the steps you need to ...

Discover More

Protect Your Document Templates

If you want to protect your templates from accidental changes, the best way to do so is by using Windows instead of Word. ...

Discover More

Calculating a Future Date

Need to figure out a date a certain number of days, weeks, months, or years in the future? It's easy to do using the ...

Discover More

Professional Development Guidance! Four world-class developers offer start-to-finish guidance for building powerful, robust, and secure applications with Excel. The authors show how to consistently make the right design decisions and make the most of Excel's powerful features. Check out Professional Excel Development today!

More ExcelTips (ribbon)

Reducing File Sizes for Workbooks with PivotTables

Need to reduce the size of your workbooks that contain PivotTables? Here's something you can try to minimize the ...

Discover More

Error in Linked PivotTable Value

Excel allows you to link to values in other workbooks, even if those values are in PivotTables. However, Excel may ...

Discover More

Rows in a PivotTable

PivotTables are used to analyze huge amounts of data. The number of rows used in a PivotTable depends on the type of ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is 0 + 7?

There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)

This Site

Got a version of Excel that uses the ribbon interface (Excel 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the menu interface.

Newest Tips
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.

Links and Sharing
OUR COMPANY
OUR PRODUCTS
OUR SITES
 

Copyright © 2025 Sharon Parq Associates, Inc.