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How to Pull a Report from Excel

Cody Schneider•

Building a report in Excel is the perfect way to turn messy spreadsheets into clear, actionable insights. Instead of drowning in endless rows of data, you can create summary tables, interactive charts, and dynamic dashboards that tell a story. This guide will walk you through exactly how to create your first report using Excel's most powerful (and user-friendly) tools.

First, What Is an Excel Report?

An Excel report isn't just a spreadsheet full of raw numbers. It's a clean and organized presentation of your data, designed to answer specific business questions. A good report summarizes key information and visualizes trends so you can make informed decisions quickly.

This typically involves a combination of:

  • Summary Tables: Aggregated data that shows totals, averages, or counts (e.g., total sales per region).

  • Charts and Graphs: Visual representations like bar charts, line graphs, or pie charts that make trends easy to spot.

  • Filters and Slicers: Interactive controls that let you (or your team) drill down into the data without needing to be an Excel wizard.

The goal is to move from a "data dump" to a focused dashboard that highlights what truly matters.

Step 1: Prepare Your Data for Reporting

Your report is only as good as the data it's built on. Before you start creating anything, you need to ensure your data is clean and structured properly. This is the most crucial step, and getting it right saves you countless headaches later on.

Follow these simple rules for your raw data:

  1. Use a Simple Tabular Layout: Your data should be organized in columns and rows. Each column represents a specific attribute (like 'Date' or 'Revenue'), and each row is a single record (like one sale).

  2. Have One Header Row: Use the very first row for your column headers, and make sure each header is unique and descriptive.

  3. No Blank Rows or Columns: Remove any completely empty rows or columns within your dataset.

  4. Don't Merge Cells: Merged cells are the enemy of reporting features like PivotTables. Keep each piece of data in its own individual cell.

  5. Be Consistent: Make sure naming conventions are consistent. For example, use "California" every time, not a mix of "California," "CA," and "california."

The Best Practice: Format as a 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 any new rows or columns you add are automatically included in your reports.

Here's how:

  1. Click anywhere inside your data range.

  2. Go to the Insert tab on the Ribbon and click Table, or just press the shortcut Ctrl + T.

  3. A small dialog box will appear. Ensure the correct range is selected and that the "My table has headers" box is checked.

  4. Click OK.

Your data range will now have colored formatting. More importantly, it's now a dynamic object that Excel recognizes, which unlocks powerful reporting capabilities.

Step 2: Create a PivotTable to Summarize Your Data

PivotTables are the engine of Excel reporting. They let you instantly summarize, group, count, and analyze thousands of rows of data with just a few clicks. It's how you take a massive dataset and condense it into a small, meaningful summary table.

Let's use a sample sales dataset with columns like Date, Product, Region, and Revenue.

  1. Click anywhere inside your Excel Table.

  2. Go to the Insert tab and click PivotTable.

  3. The "Create PivotTable" window will pop up. Because you're using an Excel Table, the correct data source (your table's name) will already be selected for you.

  4. Choose "New Worksheet" to place your report on a fresh sheet, keeping your work organized. Click OK.

You now have a blank PivotTable on a new sheet and a "PivotTable Fields" pane on the right side of your screen. This pane is your control panel. It lists all the columns from your source data. Your job is to drag and drop these fields into the four areas at the bottom:

  • Rows: Fields you place here will appear as row labels in your summary. (e.g., drag Region here to list each region.)

  • Columns: Fields placed here will become column headers. (e.g., drag Product here to see products across the top.)

  • Values: This is where you put the numbers you want to calculate. (e.g., drag Revenue here to get the SUM of revenue.)

  • Filters: For high-level filtering of your entire report.

Example: Building a Sales by Region Report

To see total sales for each region, you would:

  1. Find the Region field in the list and drag it into the Rows area. Your PivotTable will now list each unique region.

  2. Find the Revenue field and drag it into the Values area. Excel will automatically default to "Sum of Revenue".

Just like that, you have a perfect summary table showing total sales per region. You've "pulled a report" from your raw data in seconds.

Step 3: Visualize Your Report with a PivotChart

Numbers in a table are great, but a chart is often better for spotting trends. A PivotChart is a chart that is directly linked to your PivotTable. When you update the table, the chart updates automatically.

  1. Click on your PivotTable to select it.

  2. Go to the PivotTable Analyze tab in the Ribbon.

  3. In the "Tools" section, click PivotChart.

  4. Choose the type of chart you want. A Column or Bar chart is great for comparing values across categories like regions. Click OK.

You now have a chart visualizing your sales report. You can customize it like any other Excel chart - change colors, add data labels, or give it a title.

Step 4: Make Your Report Interactive with Slicers

Slicers are basically fancy, user-friendly buttons for filtering your report. They allow anyone, even people who don't know Excel, to easily drill down into the data.

  1. Click on your PivotTable or PivotChart.

  2. Go back to the PivotTable Analyze tab.

  3. Click Insert Slicer.

  4. A dialog box will appear with a list of your data columns. Check the box for the field you want to filter by - let's pick Product and Date (by Year). Click OK.

You now have two interactive Slicer boxes on your worksheet. You can click on any product name or year, and both your PivotTable and PivotChart will instantly update to show data only for your selection. To select multiple items, hold down the Ctrl key while clicking.

Step 5: Assemble Your Dashboard

You've now created the core components of a report: a summary table, a chart, and interactive filters. The final step is to arrange these elements on a single sheet to create a dashboard.

A good dashboard is clean, easy to read, and prioritizes the most important information.

  • Organize Your Layout: Typically, you'll place slicers on the left or top of the page. Display your key charts prominently in the main area of the sheet. The detailed PivotTable can be placed below the charts or on a separate "details" tab.

  • Add Other KPIs: You can create multiple PivotTables and PivotCharts from the same data source to show different metrics. For example, from our sales data, you could also create a chart showing "Units Sold by Sales Rep" and add it to your dashboard. Make sure to connect your slicers to all relevant charts so they filter everything at once (right-click slicer > Report Connections).

  • Keep it Clean: Use the View tab to turn off gridlines for a cleaner, more professional look.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

  • Forgetting to Refresh: When you add new data to your source table, a PivotTable does not update in real-time. You must refresh it. Go to the Data tab and click Refresh All, or right-click your PivotTable and select Refresh.

  • Inconsistent Data: A typo or inconsistent spelling ("Nike" vs "nike") will be treated as two separate items by a PivotTable. This messes up your summaries. The cleaning step upfront is your best defense against this.

  • Using Percentages or Counts Incorrectly: By default, the Values area will SUM numbers. You can change this. Right-click on a value in your table, go to Summarize Values By, and choose Count, Average, Min, or Max. Go to Show Values As to display percentages like "% of Grand Total."

Final Thoughts

Learning how to pull a report in Excel is about taking raw data and turning it into an organized, visual story. By cleaning your data, formatting it as a Table, and then using PivotTables, PivotCharts, and Slicers, you can build powerful, interactive dashboards that provide real value.

While Excel is fantastic, this process can become repetitive, especially when pulling CSVs from platforms like Google Analytics, Shopify, or Facebook Ads every week. We built Graphed to eliminate that time-consuming busy work. Instead of manually downloading, cleaning, and building reports, we help you connect your accounts in a few clicks. Then, you can simply describe the dashboard you want in plain English, and our AI builds it in seconds - all with live data that's always up-to-date.