A pivot table is a drag-and-drop SUMIFS. You give it a list, you drop a field into Rows, another into Columns, a number into Values, and it does the grouping and the totals. Nothing is destroyed and nothing is permanent — dragging a field out puts it back exactly as it was, which is the thing that makes people nervous and shouldn't. The one real trap is refreshing: a pivot reads a snapshot, so new rows in the source don't appear until you tell it to look again.

1. 1Click anywhere in your data, then Alt + N, V and accept the range it guesses.
2. 2Drag a text field to **Rows**, a date to **Columns**, and an amount to **Values**.
3. 3After the source changes, click the pivot and press Alt + F5 to refresh it.

Press the shortcut to play it on a sample sheet.

• Roll a transaction list up by department and month.
• Find your top customers by revenue without sorting the raw data.
• Summarise a year of expenses by category in one pass.