What Are Recommended PivotTables in Excel?
Staring at a massive spreadsheet full of data can be overwhelming. You know the answers you need are buried in those rows and columns, and you've heard that a PivotTable is the "right" way to find them. But building one from scratch can feel like being asked to pilot a plane with no training. This is where Excel's Recommended PivotTables feature comes in, acting as your friendly co-pilot to get you started.
This tutorial will show you exactly how to use Recommended PivotTables to skip the intimidating setup and get straight to the insights. You'll learn what the feature is, how to use it step-by-step, and when it's the perfect tool for the job.
What Exactly Is a PivotTable? A Quick Refresher
Before jumping into the recommendations, let's briefly touch on what a PivotTable is. At its core, a PivotTable is an interactive tool that lets you quickly summarize, analyze, and "pivot" large amounts of data without writing a single formula. It takes a raw, flat table of information and transforms it into a dynamic summary report.
For example, you could take 10,000 rows of sales data and instantly see:
Total revenue by sales rep
Which products are selling best in each region
Monthly sales trends over the past year
The challenge for many people isn't understanding the value of a PivotTable, it's the "blank canvas" problem of knowing which fields to drag into the Rows, Columns, Values, and Filters areas to get the desired report. This is the precise problem that Recommended PivotTables solves.
Enter Recommended PivotTables: Your Analytics Starting Point
Recommended PivotTables is a feature where Excel analyzes your dataset and suggests several ready-to-use PivotTable layouts. Think of it as Excel’s built-in data assistant. It looks at the structure of your data - your column headers and the type of information in each column - and generates a gallery of possible summaries it thinks you'll find useful.
Instead of starting from zero, you get to choose from a visual menu of options like "Sum of Revenue by Region" or "Count of Products by Sales Rep." It's an incredible time-saver and a fantastic learning tool for anyone who feels stuck when facing the PivotTable Fields pane.
How to Use Recommended PivotTables: A Step-by-Step Guide
Let's walk through the process with a practical example. Imagine you have a simple table of sales data for a small e-commerce business. It looks something like this:
Sample Sales Data:
Step 1: Your Data Needs to Be Clean and Tidy
Excel's recommendation engine is smart, but it's not a mind-reader. It works best with properly structured data. This means your data should be in a tabular format, following these simple rules:
One Header Row: The very first row should contain unique, descriptive headers for each column (e.g., 'Order Date', 'Region', 'Revenue').
No Blank Rows or Columns: Your data should be a single, contiguous block. Remove any completely empty rows or columns cutting through it.
Consistent Data Types: Ensure each column contains the same type of data. Numbers should be formatted as numbers, dates as dates, and so on.
No Merged Cells: Avoid merging cells within your data range, especially in the header row.
Taking a few minutes to clean your data first will dramatically improve the quality of the recommendations you get.
Step 2 (Highly Recommended): Format Your Data as an Excel Table
Once your data is clean, the single best thing you can do is format it as an official Excel Table. This makes your data "dynamic," meaning it automatically expands to include new rows you add later. This is a game-changer for ongoing reports.
To do this:
Click anywhere inside your data range.
Go to the Insert tab on the Ribbon.
Click Table.
A small box will pop up confirming the data range. Make sure the "My table has headers" box is checked. Click OK.
You'll know it worked because your data will now be formatted with alternating colors and filter arrows on the headers. The shortcut for this is Ctrl + T (or Cmd + T on a Mac).
Step 3: Access Recommended PivotTables
Now for the main event! With your cursor still inside your newly formatted Table, follow these steps:
Navigate to the Insert tab on the Ribbon.
On the far left, click the Recommended PivotTables button.
Step 4: Browse the Suggestions and Pick One
A new window will appear showcasing several possible PivotTable reports. Excel has analyzed your headers ('Region', 'Sales Rep', 'Revenue', etc.) and created thumbnail previews for you.
You might see options like:
Sum of Revenue by Sales Rep
Sum of Units Sold by Region
Sum of Revenue by Product
...and several others.
Scroll through the options on the left. As you click on each one, the right side of the window will show a larger preview of what the final report will look like. Find the one that's closest to the question you want to answer.
For our example, let's select "Sum of Revenue by Sales Rep" and click OK.
Step 5: Your PivotTable is Ready! (And You Can Still Tweak It)
Just like that, Excel will create a new worksheet in your workbook containing the fully functional PivotTable you selected. No dragging required!
But the best part is that this isn't a static image. It's a real, fully interactive PivotTable. The PivotTable Fields pane will appear on the right, showing you exactly how Excel built the report. You can use this to:
Add more data: Drag the 'Region' field into the Columns area to see revenue for each rep broken down by region.
Change the calculation: Click the down arrow on "Sum of Revenue" in the Values area and change it to Average, Count, or Max.
Drill down: Double-click any number in the PivotTable (e.g., the total revenue for one sales rep) to open a new sheet showing all the original sales records that make up that total.
You can use the recommended layout as your starting point and then customize it to explore your data further.
When to Lean on Recommended PivotTables
This feature isn't just for beginners, it's a productivity tool for everyone. Here are the best times to use it:
When You're New to PivotTables: It's the single best way to learn how PivotTables work. By reviewing the suggestions and seeing which fields Excel places in which areas, you'll quickly grasp the underlying logic.
For Quick Exploratory Analysis: When you first receive a new dataset, running Recommended PivotTables is a great way to get a quick overview of what the data contains and spot immediate patterns without having to think too hard.
When You Need Inspiration: Sometimes you know your data holds value, but you're not sure what questions to ask. The recommendations can spark ideas for an analysis you hadn't considered.
To Save Time and Clicks: Even for Excel pros, it's often faster to click one button to generate a base report and then tweak it than it is to build the whole thing manually.
Understanding the Limitations
While fantastic, Recommended PivotTables isn't a magical solution for every scenario. It's important to know its limitations:
It's Not a Substitute for Critical Thinking: The feature offers suggestions based on the structure of your data, not the specific business questions you have. It won't know you want to compare Q1 to Q2 or a sales rep's performance against their target, it will just summarize what's there.
"Garbage In, Garbage Out": As mentioned earlier, its effectiveness depends entirely on the quality of your source data. If your data is messy, has unclear headers, or is poorly structured, the recommendations will likely be confusing or useless.
Works in the Present: The tool only analyzes the data as it exists now. It doesn't create trend lines, forecasts, or complex calculated fields for you. Those are customizations you need to add afterward.
Final Thoughts
Recommended PivotTables is one of the most useful and user-friendly features in Excel for anyone working with data. It effectively bridges the gap between having raw data and gaining real insights, removing the initial intimidation factor of building a PivotTable from scratch and empowering you to explore and analyze with confidence.
Ultimately, features like this help automate the tedious parts of manual reporting, but wrestling with spreadsheets is still a massive time suck - especially when your data lives across multiple platforms like Google Analytics, Shopify, and your CRM. We built Graphed to solve this bigger problem. By connecting your data sources once, you can ask questions in plain English - like "show me my Shopify sales by Facebook campaign" - and instantly get live, automated dashboards, completely removing the need to export and wrangle data in spreadsheets day after day.