PivotTables are a useful type of table within Excel that allow for automatic aggregation and summary of data for easy retrieval. For example, in a spreadsheet filled with people’s favorite choices of food and drink, a PivotTable can be used to automatically count how many people chose Coca-Cola as their favorite drink.

This article showcases ways to use PivotTables on a set of data. By selecting different fields, a PivotTable can be used to automate summation of a column. This is useful so that you don’t have to keep manually updating the sum whenever the data changes or gets added to.

These tables have a lot of have flexibility too. In this example from Medium, a PivotTable is used to add together quantities within regional subsets of data while simultaneously calculating revenue. The usefulness of PivotTables comes from their ability to quickly pull data matching specific conditions and efficiently summarize them in a readable format. I personally foresee PivotTables dramatically reducing the amount of effort it takes for me to summarize my data.