Article Excerpt...
The first thing to know about Pivot Tables is that there is nothing a Pivot Table does that an advanced user can’t also do through writing formulas. The value of the Pivot Table is that the data can be sliced and diced quickly and the drag-and-drop interface means that there is no need to wrestle with sometimes-unwieldy formulas. Instead, Pivot Tables help you explore the data and visualize the important bits in a very friendly way.
The first thing to know about Pivot Tables is that there is nothing a Pivot Table does that an advanced user can’t also do through writing formulas. The value of the Pivot Table is that the data can be sliced and diced quickly and the drag-and-drop interface means that there is no need to wrestle with sometimes-unwieldy formulas. Instead, Pivot Tables help you explore the data and visualize the important bits in a very friendly way.