how can I format a .csv file from external data?

[Guest]

I am trying to format a worksheet to look the way it is most useful to me. I
am dealing with different classes of mail. On a daily basis this .csv data is
exported to our office computer but the format leaves something to be
desired. To give you an idea of the format I have a column for my different
accounts, a column for class of mail, and a column for the total amount of
postage charged for each instance. The report lists the accounts in order of
postage charged (i.e. first account to be charged , second and so on). This
is fine, the problem column is the class column I want to have separate
columns for each class of mail so I can total separate classes independently.
Right now after the the data is exported to our office computer if you open
it it opens into a sheet that we have to do 15-20 minutes of work on so we
can get our daily totals for each class. Is this something I can change with
Excel or does the dat have to be formatted differently before it arrives? If
anybody could help me I would appreciate it we just got a new $35,00 mail
machine that was supposed to make our life easier that has not lived up to
our expectations yet. If need be I could supply some of the raw data for a
sample.

 

[Tom Ogilvy]

You can sum or count on a condition using Sumif and Countif

So you could Sum (or Count) on class if you have a single column that lists
the class for each row

=Sumif(Class,1,Charge)

where class would be A:A for example given that class is in column A and
assume Charge is in Column f

=Sumif(A:A,1,F:F) gets the total charges for class 1.

another approach is to use a Pivot Table

This will give you summarized data over designated categories. Select you
data and do

Data=>Pivot Table Report and follow the wizard.

Data=>Subtotal is another thing you might want to look at.