From the course: Excel: PivotTables for Beginners

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Create the value field first

Create the value field first

- [Instructor] Sometimes people put in a blank pivot table like this one and they think, "Well, now what?" The first step is to create a value field. And we do that by making sure the pivot table fields list is open. Mine's not open yet, so I'll right click this empty pivot table and I'll choose show field list. Okay, great. Now we need to make that value field, and the way you do that is you drag one of these fields down here to the values area, but which one do you choose? You typically choose the one that has numbers or quantities in the field. So if these four fields amount is the obvious one to choose for the value field. So I'll go ahead and I'll click and I'll drag that down to the values area. There we go, we have a little pivot table here with just one thing, the value field, and that's the sum of the amount field. But let's try something. I'll remove this sum of amount field right now. Just click drag and then…

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