Tool basics: Excel
Five short lessons for students who are new to tables, filters, formulas, PivotTables, and charts. Rehearse with 12 fictional café records, then repeat the steps in Excel. No additional graded submission.
Original fictional teaching data. The file is deliberately small and separate from the Superstore studio dataset. Desktop and web Excel menus can differ; use the Microsoft references below for your version.
START HERE · ONE CHART, TOGETHER
New to charts? Follow four small steps.
This is optional practice with the café file, not the Superstore class lab. No prior PivotTable or Tableau knowledge is assumed. Build in your chosen app; this page guides and checks your work.
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Step 1 of 4
Open and inspect
Download the café practice CSV below. Open it in Excel. Check that RowID, Date, Campus, Product, Units, UnitPrice and Sales appear as seven columns with 12 data rows. Save a working copy as .xlsx. Each row is a product-day total, not a customer.
Something does not look right
One bar instead of three: add Product as the grouping field. Three values of 4: you counted records; use Sum of Sales. Everything in one column: reopen the CSV with comma as its delimiter. Missing fields: check you opened the café practice file. A blank chart: clear filters and check that Sales contains numbers.
Menus vary between desktop and web versions. Tableau text-file help · Tableau bar-chart help · Microsoft PivotTable help.
Save your workbook in Excel or Tableau as well. This site saves your step and notes, not changes inside those applications.
More Excel skills — revisit when needed
LESSON 1 OF 5
Read and organize a table
Recognize one record, one field, and a useful header row.
- Download the café CSV, open it in Excel, and save a working copy as .xlsx so charts and formatting can be retained.
- Select the complete range A1:G13. Use Insert → Table and confirm that your table has headers. Keep one header row; avoid merged cells and blank rows inside the data.
- Identify each column: RowID is an identifier, Date is a day, Campus and Product are categories, Units is a count, UnitPrice and Sales are amounts in USD. If Date imports as text, convert it to dates before using a date axis.
- Find RowID 1. Its four coffees at $3 each give $12 Sales. Each row is one product’s daily total at a campus, not an individual customer order.
Could you count these 12 rows and call the result 12 customer orders?
No. These are 12 product-day summaries. Individual customer orders are not in the file.
Connection to class: A worksheet column corresponds to a database attribute. A row’s meaning determines what COUNT measures.
Rehearse the result
This browser preview demonstrates filtering and summarizing. Build your actual PivotTable and chart in Excel.
12 of 12 records visible · Sales total: $184
| RowID | Date | Campus | Product | Units | UnitPrice | Sales |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2026-09-01 | North | Coffee | 4 | 3 | 12 |
| 2 | 2026-09-01 | North | Tea | 6 | 2 | 12 |
| 3 | 2026-09-01 | North | Sandwich | 2 | 6 | 12 |
| 4 | 2026-09-02 | South | Coffee | 8 | 3 | 24 |
| 5 | 2026-09-02 | South | Tea | 2 | 2 | 4 |
| 6 | 2026-09-02 | South | Sandwich | 5 | 6 | 30 |
| 7 | 2026-09-03 | North | Coffee | 6 | 3 | 18 |
| 8 | 2026-09-03 | North | Tea | 4 | 2 | 8 |
| 9 | 2026-09-03 | North | Sandwich | 3 | 6 | 18 |
| 10 | 2026-09-04 | South | Coffee | 2 | 3 | 6 |
| 11 | 2026-09-04 | South | Tea | 8 | 2 | 16 |
| 12 | 2026-09-04 | South | Sandwich | 4 | 6 | 24 |
Sales (USD) by Product
Scope: All campuses · September 1–4, 2026
Bars start at zero. The displayed values match the filtered summary.
Help for your version of Excel
Microsoft: basic Excel tasks ↗
Microsoft: create a PivotTable ↗
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