Hands-On Microsoft Access: A Practical Guide to Improving Your Access Skills

Getting Started with Pivot Tables

Any table or query can be given a PivotTable view by selecting it from the View drop-down list (see Figure 14.1). But this is merely the launch point for creating a pivot table; your work is just beginning. The virgin PivotTable view in Figure 14.2 can be compared to the Design view that greets you when you build a new form from scratch—but with one vital difference. With a form, you build in Design view, but the display is in Form view. With a pivot table, you build in PivotTable view and display in PivotTable view. The main building blocks of a pivot table are the fields in the field list, which you drag and drop onto specific areas of the table.

Figure 14.1. PivotTable and PivotChart are views in a table, ...