How to Prepare a Report in Excel

Building a professional report in Excel can feel like a daunting task, but it’s actually a straightforward process once you break it down. Instead of getting lost in a sea of cells and formulas, you can follow a clear path from raw data to actionable insights. This guide will walk you through the essential steps to prepare a clean, insightful, and visually appealing report in Excel, even if you’re not a spreadsheet wizard.

Step 1: Define the Goal of Your Report

Before you even open Excel, take a moment to answer two simple questions:

What question is this report supposed to answer?
Who is the audience for this report?

A report without a clear purpose is just a collection of numbers. Your goal determines which data you need and how you should present it. For example, a report for a marketing team evaluating campaign performance will look very different from a financial report for executives.

Let's use a common scenario as an example: You are a manager at an e-commerce store, and you need to prepare a monthly sales report. Your goal is to answer: "Which product categories are performing best and in which regions?" Your audience is the sales team, who need this information to focus their efforts for the next month.

Step 2: Gather and Organize Your Raw Data

With a clear goal, you can now gather the necessary data. This might come from your company’s CRM, e-commerce platform (like Shopify), or marketing tools. The key is to organize it in a "tidy" format suitable for Excel analysis.

A tidy data set has a simple structure:

One header row: Each column has a unique, descriptive title (e.g., "Order Date," "Product Category," "Region," "Units Sold," "Sale Amount").
Columns are variables: Each column contains one type of information.
Rows are observations: Each row represents a single record, like an individual sale or transaction.
No merged cells or empty rows/columns: These can interfere with Excel’s analytical tools.

Imagine a spreadsheet with columns for Order ID, Order Date, Region, Product Category, Product Name, Units Sold, and Sale Amount. Each row is a unique order, making the data clean and easy for Excel to read.

Step 3: Clean and Prepare Your Data for Analysis

Raw data is rarely perfect. Spending a few minutes cleaning it up now will save you hours of headaches later. This is often the most important step in creating an accurate report.

Convert Your Data into an Excel Table

First, turn your data range into a formal Excel Table. This is a game-changer. Click anywhere inside your data range and press Ctrl + T (or go to Insert > Table). An Excel Table gives you:

Easy Sorting and Filtering: Dropdown arrows instantly appear in your header row.
Automatic Formatting: Banded rows make the data easier to read.
Dynamic Range: The table automatically expands to include new rows, so your formulas and charts update without manual adjustments.

Common Data Cleaning Tasks

Now, perform a few checks to ensure your data is reliable:

Remove Duplicates: Go to the Data tab and click Remove Duplicates. Select the columns that should uniquely identify a record (like an Order ID) to delete any accidental copies.
Handle Blanks: Use the filter dropdowns in your table header to quickly check for blank cells in important columns. Decide if those rows should be deleted or if the missing information needs to be filled in.
Correct Inconsistencies: A common issue is inconsistent text entries, such as "USA," "U.S.A.," and "United States" in a Region column. Use the Filter menu to find these variations and use Find and Replace (Ctrl + H) to standardize them. Functions like =TRIM() can remove extra spaces, and =PROPER() can fix capitalization.
Check Data Formats: Ensure numbers are formatted as numbers (or currency), not text. Make sure dates are recognized as dates by Excel, otherwise you won't be able to analyze them over time.

Step 4: Summarize and Analyze Your Data

Once your data is clean and structured in an Excel Table, you can start uncovering insights. Excel provides powerful tools designed specifically for this purpose.

Use PivotTables to Summarize Data Instantly

PivotTables are the engine of Excel reporting. They let you summarize thousands of rows of data in seconds without writing a single formula. They are perfect for answering our question: "Which product categories are performing best and in which regions?"

How to Create a PivotTable:

Click anywhere inside your Excel Table.
Go to the Insert tab and click PivotTable. A dialog box will appear, and since you're using a table, the range will be selected automatically. Click OK.
Excel will create a new sheet with the PivotTable Fields pane on the right side.

This pane is where you build your summary. Drag and drop the fields from your data into the four areas:

Rows: Puts data categories down the left side (e.g., drag Product Category here).
Columns: Puts data categories across the top (e.g., drag Region here).
Values: The numbers you want to calculate (e.g., drag Sale Amount here. Excel will default to Sum).
Filters: Allows you to filter the entire report by a specific field (e.g., drag Order Date here to filter by month).

By dragging "Product Category" into Rows, "Region" into Columns, and "Sale Amount" into Values, you instantly get a table showing total sales for each category, broken down by region. You've answered your core question in under a minute.

Leverage Functions for Custom Calculations

Sometimes you need answers that a PivotTable can't directly provide. That's where Excel functions come in. Here are a few essential ones for reporting:

SUMIFS: Adds up cells based on multiple criteria. For example, to find total sales for "Electronics" in the "North" region only.
=SUMIFS(SalesTable[Sale Amount], SalesTable[Product Category], "Electronics", SalesTable[Region], "North")
COUNTIFS: Counts cells based on multiple criteria. You could use it to find out how many individual sales of "Clothing" were made.
=COUNTIFS(SalesTable[Product Category], "Clothing")
AVERAGEIFS: Calculates the average of cells based on multiple criteria, such as the average sale price for a specific product.
=AVERAGEIFS(SalesTable[Sale Amount], SalesTable[Product Category], "Electronics")
XLOOKUP: A modern and flexible replacement for VLOOKUP, it finds things in a table or range by row. For example, if you have a separate table with product profit margins, you could use XLOOKUP to pull that margin into your main sales data table based on the product name.

Step 5: Visualize Your Findings with Charts

Numbers and tables are great, but visuals make your insights easier to understand at a glance. Visualizations transform your report from a data dump into a compelling story.

Choose the Right Chart for Your Data

Selecting the right chart type is essential for clear communication:

Bar/Column Chart: Best for comparing values across categories (e.g., sales per product category).
Line Chart: Ideal for showing trends over time (e.g., daily or monthly sales).
Pie Chart: Use sparingly, but can be effective for showing parts of a whole (e.g., percentage of sales from each region). Avoid using it with more than 5-6 categories.

You can create a chart directly from your PivotTable. Just click inside the PivotTable, go to the PivotTable Analyze tab, and click PivotChart. The chart will be linked to your PivotTable and will update automatically as your data does.

Use Conditional Formatting to Highlight Key Insights

Conditional Formatting makes important data stand out instantly. You can use it to automatically highlight:

Top 10 Performers: Highlight the top 10 products by sales.
Data Bars: Add small bars inside cells to quickly show the relative size of a value.
Color Scales: Use a color gradient (e.g., red-to-green) to show performance from low to high.

Select the data you want to format (like the 'Sale Amount' column), go to the Home tab, click Conditional Formatting, and choose a rule.

Step 6: Assemble a Dynamic Dashboard

The final step is to bring all your elements - PivotTables, charts, and key metrics - together onto a single sheet to create a dashboard. This provides a high-level overview of your findings in one place.

Create a new sheet and name it "Dashboard" or "Report."
Copy and paste your charts onto this sheet. You can also paste your PivotTables (use Paste Special > Paste Link > Picture if you don't want the original table).
Add a title to your dashboard, like "Monthly Sales Performance Report."
Use text boxes to add comments or summarize key takeaways next to your visualizations.

Make Your Dashboard Interactive with Slicers

Slicers are user-friendly filter buttons that make your dashboard interactive. Instead of using clunky dropdown filters, anyone viewing the report can simply click a button to filter the data.

To add a Slicer:

Click on one of your PivotCharts or PivotTables.
Go to the PivotTable Analyze tab and click Insert Slicer.
Select the field you want to filter by, like "Region" or "Product Category."

Now you have a floating menu of buttons. If you have multiple charts linked to the same PivotTable or data source, you can right-click the Slicer, go to Report Connections, and link it to all relevant visuals. Now, when a user clicks a region, every chart and table on your dashboard will update to show data for just that region.

Final Thoughts

Preparing a report in Excel is a systematic process of defining your goals, preparing your data, summarizing with tools like PivotTables, and visualizing the results. By following these steps, you can confidently turn complex datasets into clear, actionable reports that drive better business decisions.

The manual work of exporting CSVs, cleaning them, and building reports in Excel can consume hours every week. We built Graphed to automate this entire process. We connect directly to your data sources like Google Analytics, Shopify, and Salesforce, so your data is always up-to-date. You can create the exact same reports and dashboards simply by asking questions in plain English, getting real-time answers in seconds instead of hours of manual effort.