Pivotal Advance Boosts Excel's Power

In today's accounting world, financial and operational data typically is stored in a variety of programs and formats. When accountants need to prepare a report based on data from various systems, the first step is to export the data into Excel. Typically, it is fairly easy to export the required data into Excel. But, depending on the structure or format of the data, or if multiple data tables need to be combined, it is not always easy to summarize the data in a single report.

That's where a new Excel 2010 tool called PowerPivot comes into play. PowerPivot is a free plug-in from Microsoft that boosts the capabilities of the already popular PivotTable function, allowing you to create previously impossible PivotTables that enhance Excel's efficiency and effectiveness.