Goodwill Community Foundation creating
opportunities for a better life grouping
is a good way to make your data more
manageable you can use it to show or
hide certain parts of your worksheet so
you can focus on the information you
need you can even add subtotals to
summarize or outline your data in this
example I have a list of t-shirt orders
but I really don't need to see the
people's names and payment information
right now so with these three columns
selected I'm going to go to the data tab
and then click the group command now we
can show or hide this group using the
button that's attached to this bracket
here click the minus sign to hide or
collapse the data and the plus sign to
show it again
to ungroup any data make sure it's
selected
then click the ungroup command and
you're all set the subtotal command is
similar to groups you can use it to
create groups automatically and also add
functions like sum count and average to
help you summarize your data in this
example I'd like to tally up the number
of orders for each t-shirt size
including small medium large and
extra-large before we can add a subtotal
our data has to be sorted by the column
we plan to summarize so I've already
taken care of that here as you can see
the t-shirts have been put into a custom
sort order going from smallest to
largest all we have to do now is click
the subtotal command and a dialog box
will appear here we'll select the column
that's going to be the basis for the
subtotal in this case that's t-shirt
size next we'll pick the function that
we're going to be using now there are
several common functions to choose from
like some average and product but we're
going to use count which will just count
the number of cells that contain each
size if you had numerical data you could
choose sum instead and it would actually
add the values from each of those cells
to create a subtotal finally check the
column where you want the subtitle to
appear then click OK now a couple of
things have happened here each t-shirt
size is now in its own group indicated
by the brackets here on the left and all
those groups are inside a larger group
this is also called an outline in Excel
the other thing that's happened is that
each group has a subtotal beneath it so
we can see the number of shirts that
have been ordered in each size and at
the very bottom we can also see a grand
total
to make the worksheet easier to read we
can show or hide the groups like we did
before but when you have groups inside
of groups like we do in this example
sometimes it's easier just to view them
by level just look for the buttons to
the left of your worksheet the highest
level which is three in this case will
show all of your data level two will
hide the details of each size leaving
just the individual subtotals finally
level one will hide everything so we can
only see the grand total
let's click three to show the entire
worksheet again
okay there's one more thing we'd like to
point out when you use subtotals you'll
notice these extra rows have been
inserted in the spreadsheet and while
they're very useful for viewing our
subtotal information if you need to
change the formatting or arrangement of
your spreadsheet you might find that
these subtotal rows just get in the way
in a case like this it's best to remove
subtotals from your spreadsheet before
you make any other big changes to remove
subtotals from your worksheet all you
have to do is click the subtotal command
then click the button that says remove
all
grouping and subtitling can make your
worksheet less cluttered more organized
and easier to view so keep these
features in mind the next time you need
help
summarizing your data
you