One great feature of pivot tables is that you can immediately drill down to the detail on any numbers that intrigue you.
You can follow along with the Pivot Tables Pivots table.
Here is a pivot table that we had from that file. If your file looks different, that is OK, you can still follow on the view that you have.
Suppose we wanted to know more about why rep 9 did so well in sporting goods. With a pivot table, you can go right to the underlying detail. Double click the cell for rep 9 under that product line. What you get is a list of the invoices.
Now let's get picky to point out another tip. Notice the third invoice amount. It is not formatted like the others. That is because this drill down just picks up the underlying data. While this is a mild case, with larger databases and more involved data, the results can be harder to read.
The quick fix is to go back to the underlying data. In this case, it would be the data tab.
What we do is highlight any row of data (it does not matter since here they are formatted the same) and we will copy the formatting using the format painter (paintbrush) icon.
Presto, we now have a formatted inquiry sheet. Now notice that the third line has a formatted number.
Use pivot tables and you can quickly drill down on unusual numbers and get deeper insights behind the numbers.