This Pivot Table Guide Will Save You HOURS!

A pivot table is an essential data analysis tool for market researchers, business intelligence analysts and anybody who needs a quick visualization of their data.

In this blog post, we will give you the basics to get started with pivot tables in your dashboards.

We hope this guide will help you get started so you can start creating more powerful visualizations in your own custom dashboards.

Pivot tables are a fantastic tool that is available in Google Data Studio that displays your data in multiple dimensions simultaneously which are perfect to summarize trends and answer business queries!

What are pivot tables?

Pivot tables, group values and shows the sums, averages, or other statistics of all the individual items in a more extensive table. Pivot tables can be created by using pivot charts to rearrange information.

Pivot tables, in a standard table take the rows and then pivot them so they become columns. This allows you to aggregate and summarize the data in a manner that a conventional table can't.

The following table shows the Revenue Per User measure for each calendar quarter and year:

A comprehensive summary of this data isn't possible with this table, which just shows which nation earned the highest money per user and when.

A pivot table, however, quickly shows the relationship of this data:

The data from the preceding example is neatly summarized in the following table. Anomalies and outliers in your data are easy to identify. Several nations, for example, generated no income in the fourth quarter.

Using Data Studio's pivot tables, you may add additional row and column dimensions. In the following example, the rows are given the Gender dimension. Breaking down the data even further provides you with even more information:

Pivot Tables Explained

When it comes to creating algorithms to summarize and analyze your data, pivot tables are a convenient and time-saving alternative. Because of this, they've been a favorite for data analysts who use spreadsheet applications such as Google Sheets or Excel.

Here are some features of pivot tables;

Show totals: Both rows and columns may have totals and subtotals in a Pivot Table.

Expand-collapse: Using the + and – buttons in the column headers, report readers may reveal or conceal various levels of information in the pivot table. Data may then be examined at the degree of detail that is most appealing to viewers. Expand-collapse reduces the number of charts required in your reports by allowing you to present both summary and comprehensive data in a single pivot table.

You may use pivot tables in your client- or upper-management-focused reports thanks to Google's Data Studio product, which included them in 2017. With Google Data Studio, pivot tables tell stories by presenting data in conjunction with other representations of graphs.

Of course, in order for pivot tables to tell a compelling story, it is essential to learn how to use them properly. Therefore, let's discover how to create pivot tables using Google Data Studio!

How to build a pivot table?

How to create a pivot table in Google Sheets?

Start the Google Sheets spreadsheet and select all cells that contain information. Click Data > Pivot Table. See if Google's suggested pivot table analyses address your concerns. To build your own custom pivot table, select Add below Rows as well as Columns to choose the data you'd like to study.

Creating a pivot table in Google Sheets is a common question, but one that often leads to frustration. Problems occur mainly because of selecting wrong column/row combinations which cause null or divided by zero errors. It will be challenging to use Google Sheets for pivot tables and many people say it is hard to use Google Sheets for creating pivot tables. Here comes Google Data Studio.

How to add a pivot table to your Google Data Studio report?

Pivot tables can be added like any other element on Google Data Studio. The first thing you should do is to click on “Add a chart” and select “Pivot table”. Make sure you choose the data source you want and add metrics and dimensions.

Pivot tables can have up to 2 column dimensions and 10 metrics, but recommended to keep metrics up to 5. This way your table will be easy to read and analyse.

Here below you can watch how to add a pivot table to a Google Data Studio dashboard;