Import Data from External Sources to build a Pivot Table

In today’s let us look at how to Import data into pivot tables

This feature is one of the most important features extensively used by organizations dealing with big data sets.

If your source data has some other location in your computer, may be in a different excel file or it may be completely situated at a cloud server such as Azure, you can still pull off data from there.

You can import data into your Pivot Table from the following data sources:

• Excel workbook
• Microsoft Access database
• SQL Server
• Analysis Services
• Windows Azure Marketplace
• OData Data Feed

We have made an excel sheet and inserted a pivot table into the sheet using the source data within the sheet. Our sheet looks like this:

Now suppose we want to add another pivot table to this sheet.

But this time our data source is external, which means we have to import/load the data from another source.

Our external source (excel file):

Let us see an example where we pull up data from another excel sheet within our local filesystem.

Steps to Import/Load external data for Pivot table:

1. Go to Insert -> Tables -> PivotTable

2. Select Use an external data source and click Choose Connection.

3. Now click on Browse for more in the next dialog

4. Select the desired excel file you want to make as a pivot table in the current worksheet

Double Click on the desired external excel file.

5. Select the table and then click on Ok

6. Now give the current location of the cell, where you want to display the pivot table in the current sheet

And then click on OK.

Now select all the fields which you want to include in the new Pivot Table In the right sidebar Pivot table field

Voila! You now have 2 different pivot tables from different sources.

You probably learned a lot about pivot tables and its features.We encourage you to Keep Learning!