How to Create Great
Reports in Excel
Anne Walsh has been a freelance
trainer based in Ireland since the
mid-1990s. She is a former MCT
(Microsoft-Certified Trainer) and is
an MOS master instructor. She is the
author of Your Excel Survival KitA
Guide to Surviving and Thriving in an
Excel World published by MrExcel.com
in 2016.
Business Expert Press 978-1-63157-734-5 (2018)
www.businessexpertpress.com
Anne Walsh
Abstract: This article, on using Excel 2016, shows you
how to prepare your data in Excel to use in a report.
It deals with the oft-ignored topic of preliminary data
cleansing in Excel and offers a step-by-step solution on
how to solve the most common problems. It then covers
the creation of the ubiquitous pivot table in Excel, which
allows you to miniaturize your data. You will be given
step-by-step instructions on how to use the various cal-
culation options in the pivot table feature to show your
data in different ways, including the use of conditional
formatting to quickly identify outliers. In the final part
of the report, you will be given step-by-step instructions
on how to maintain your report as new data are added.
Key words: Creating reports in Excel, create a report in
Excel, create report from Excel data, data preparation,
formatting reports in Excel, pivot tables, spreadsheet
report, using Excel to generate reports, using Excel to
create reports
Introduction
This article covers the creation and maintenance of the
most commonly used reporting tool in Excel: the ubiqui-
tous pivot table. This article will be using Excel 2016 but
many of the features are also relevant for earlier versions
of Excel. There are many definitions of what a pivot table
is but in its simplest format, it miniaturizes your data. It
allows you to take thousands of lines of transactions and
summarize them into a single table. You can use features
like Slicers, Charts, and Timelines to quickly zoom in on
one particular customer/region/subdataset.
It is then very common to take that pivot table with
its accompanying chart and use PowerPoint to give a
presentation on it.
This article has three parts.
Part One is about data cleansing and preparation. We
will begin with an often overlooked aspect of this: data
cleansing and preparation. However, as chefs will al-
ways tell you, you cant create a great meal without good
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 How to Create Great Reports in Excel
ingredients. This shows you how to ensure
your data ingredients are top notch.
Part Two is about pivot table creation.
In this part we will look at the creation
of your pivot table and chart. We will also
look at the different ways you can present
your numbers using the inbuilt Pivot Table
features.
Part Three is about presenting and main-
taining your report. In this part we will also
look at how to use this chart in a Power-
Point presentation and we will look at how
to maintain this pivot table to ensure it re-
flects the most up-to-date data. We will also
look at some options to automate this work.
Part One: Data Cleansing and
Preparation
What Clean Data Looks Like
Nowadays most of the time, the data you
get will come as part of a data dump. This
just means that the data has been captured
somewhere else and will then be imported
into an Excel sheet. I reckon that some of
the most used phrases in the IT world are:
Please wait, Ok and Cancel, and multiple
variations of Can I have that data in Excel
please? If you are importing your data
from a system like Oracle, JD Edwards, or
SAP, the chances are your data will already
be clean. In which case I would suggest that
you go straight to Part Two (page 8) How-
ever, it will probably be useful to check that
your data meets the criteria listed below.
Although the term Excel file is being used
here, its probable that your source data will
be in what is called a CSV file (comma sep-
arated values). The terms will be used in-
terchangeably in this article.
1. One column, one heading: Each col-
umn should have a title heading and that
should fit into one cell. Excel tends to
ignore headings that span multiple cells
and just grabs the bottom one. You can
read the steps to tidy this up on page.
2. No blank dates/cells: While you will
inevitably have blank cells in any data
2 Business Expert Press 978-1-63157-734-5 (2018)
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set, one of the first things you should do
is fill in any blank cells in your date col-
umns. Why? Because if you want to group
your data by months/years and you have
blank cells in any of those columns, Ex-
cel will simply return the rather cryptic
message Cannot group by that selection
and you will not be able to view your data
by month/quarters/years without using
extra columns to extract the date/month.
Ensure that all date cells have a valid en-
try; e.g., 30th February will be rejected
by Excel. If you do not have a date, the
easiest thing is simply to enter either
the first day of the month or the last day
of the month. The steps for completing
blank cells will also be given later in the
report. You can read about it on page 4
3. No blank rows/column: The steps for
this will be given later on page 5 Why? If
your data includes blank rows/columns,
Excel will try to include those blank col-
umns and this can be a real source of
confusion.
4. Remove sub-totals: Many accounts
packages have calculated totals in their
Excel export. Remove thosethey will
distort your numbers. An example: if you
are using a pivot table to analyze sales,
Excel just needs the individual transac-
tions, not the totals. The steps to remove
this are given on page.
5. Extra columns to extract data: Some-
times we only want to see specific entries
in the data set. We can use an extra col-
umn to specifically identify the entries
that meet that criteria. The steps to
remove this are given on page
6. Quick navigation: Learn keyboard short-
cuts for quick navigation: Ctrl and Home
always brings you back to cell A1 (partic-
ularly useful if you have found yourself
accidentally down at row 1048576). Ctrl
and right arrow brings you to the right of
the data. Ctrl and left arrow brings you
to the left side of the data.
7. Make the split: Sometimes all the data
we need to analyze is in one column,
but we need it in separate columns. In
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 How to Create Great Reports in Excel
that case use Text to Columns to split
out your data.
8. Table it: After you have completed all
your data cleansing exercises, then con-
vert your data to a table (it makes it look
so much prettier and it makes updating
your pivot table so much easier
particularly with large data sets).
If your data meets all these criteria, please
go straight onto Part Two. If you realize that
your data needs some engineering, we will
cover that in the next couple of pages.
One Column/One Heading
If the titles of your data span more than one
cell, you will need to assemble those head-
ings into one cell. We will use Concatenate
and Paste values to do that:
1. Create an extra row between your data
and your headings (click on the row
heading above your actual data, click on
Ctrl and + or click on Home | Insert |
Insert Sheet Rows
Figure 1:
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2. Click in this new blank row underneath
your first heading.
3. Type in =
4. Click on top title row (you will see a cell
reference, e.g., A1), enter &
5. If you wish to have a space between the
two entries, now enter (make sure
there is a space between the two quota-
tion marks).
6. Note that if your titles are in more than
two cells, you will have to click on each
one to ensure they are all in one cell.
7. Click on second title row (you will see a
cell reference, e.g., B1), and press Enter.
8. This creates the formula.
9. Copy it across for the other headings.
10. Highlight this new row, click Home |
Copy
11. Staying in the same range, click Home |
Paste | Paste Values (this converts the
formula to actual text).
12. Remove the original multiple cell headings
and replace it with this newly created
one column/one cell entry by using
Copy | Paste
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