By default, most data in a pivot table will be set to SUM the data. But sometimes you may want to count the number of times a certain piece of data appears.
It is pretty easy to set a pivot table to return a count of something instead of a SUM.
In this tutorial, I will show you how to count values in a pivot table in Google Sheets.
Setting a Pivot Table to Count
Pivot tables are powerful tools that can be used to summarize and analyze large data sets. One very useful thing you can do with pivot tables is control how data is summarized.
By default, most data will be set to SUM in a pivot table, but you can easily change this to COUNT or COUNTA by changing the summarize by settings in your values section.
Here is an example pivot table I have created where it is displaying the SUM of sales for various items:
I will be changing this to show a COUNT instead of a SUM
Here is how:
1. Navigate to the values section of your Pivot table editor
2. Find the value that you want to set to a count and click on the drop-down arrow under the “Summarize by” setting
3. Select COUNT or COUNTA depending on which one you want to use.
4. Your data will now be set to COUNT
Closing Thoughts
Changing the “summarize by” settings of a pivot table is pretty simple through the pivot table editor. In addition, to count, you have many other options that you can control for how your pivot table displays data.
You can set it to display average, min, max, standard deviation, and more. All of these settings are found under the “summarize by” settings in your pivot table
More Google Sheets Tutorials:
How to Sort a Pivot Table