Though many consumers know the basics of using Excel, few users understand the powerful capabilities of the PivotTable and PivotChart features. These tools can help turn long lists of unreadable data into dynamically generated, easy-to-read tables and charts that highlight useful and pertinent business information. Companies rely on this type of data from marketing, accounting, and finance to help make better decisions about products, sales and even human resources. Charts are interactive, allowing the consumer to tweak results with the click of a mouse and PivotTables allow you to fuse data from several sources into one document. This book shows users how to work with PivotTables and PivotCharts to make sense of their data. It covers features such as: understanding PivotTable benefits and uses; creating and customizing PivotTables; using PivotTables to analyze business data; building custom calculations; linking to external data sources, including Access databases, Word tables, Web pages, XML data, SQL Server databases, and OLAP cubes; publishing PivotTables to the Web; multiple consolidation of data, for example, summarizing annual fiscal data by quarters; preparing financial reporting, budgeting, and data analysis across departments; and using VBA to create macros that automate frequently used PivotTable tasks.