Page 256 - Excel 2013 All-in-One For Dummies

238 Reorganizing the Worksheet
must use a uniform layout with a row of column headings identifying each column of data and summary rows that subtotal and total the data in rows above (like the CG Media Sales table shown in Figure 4-4).
After outlining a table or list, you can condense the table’s display when you want to use only certain levels of summary information, and you can just
as easily expand the outlined table or list to display various levels of detail data as needed. Being able to control which outline level is displayed in the worksheet makes it easy to print summary reports with various levels of data (see Book II, Chapter 5) as well as to chart just the summary data (see Book V, Chapter 1).
Spreadsheet outlines are a little different from the outlines you created in high school and college. In those outlines, you placed the headings at the highest level (I.) at the top of the outline with the intermediate headings indented below. Most worksheet outlines, however, seem backward in the sense that the highest level summary row and column are located at the bottom and far right of the table or list of data, with the columns and rows of intermediate supporting data located above and to the left of the summary row and column.
The reason that worksheet outlines often seem “backward” when compared to word-processing outlines is that, most often, to calculate your summary totals in the worksheet, you naturally place the detail levels of data above the summary rows and to the left of the summary columns that total them. When creating a word-processing outline, however, you place the major headings above subordinate headings, while at the same time indenting each subordinate level, reflecting the way we read words from left to right and down the page.
Outlines for data tables (as opposed to data lists) are also different from reg- ular word-processing outlines because they outline the data in not one, but two hierarchies: a vertical hierarchy that summarizes the row data, and a horizontal hierarchy that summarizes the column data. (You don’t get much of that in your regular term paper!)
Creating the outline
To create an outline from a table of data, position the cell pointer in the table or list containing the data to be outlined and then click the Auto Outline option on the Group command button’s drop-down menu on the Data tab on the Ribbon (or press Alt+AGA).
By default, Excel assumes that summary rows in the selected data table are below their detail data, and summary columns are to the right of their detail data, which is normally the case. If, however, the summary rows are above the detail data, and summary columns are to the left of the detail data, Excel can still build the outline.