If you record daily sales data in Excel, it may be impossible to explain variances from day to day. Instead, it may make more sense to summarize the data by week to spot trends and explain variations.

Q. I usually like Excel PivotTables, but because they don’t allow me to do certain things, such as delete cells or insert new columns or rows, I’m wondering if there is a reasonable alternative? A.

Learn how to quickly summarize Excel data on-the-fly using these easy-to-implement features. Summarizing data is one of Microsoft Excel’s main functions. The good news is that a lot of number ...