Pivot tables for non-numeric data?

[David Schwartz]

I've got some survey data in which respondents chose among different
text descriptors. I want to create a table where the frequency of the
different responses are tallied by a couple of different grouping
variables. Can I use a pivot table for this? They seem to assume
quantitative data.

Regardless of the answer to this question, can you provide a hint as
to the most straightforward method of creating the crosstab tables?

TIA,
David

 

[Shane Devenshire]

Hi,

It sounds like you want to do a count, which can easily be done with pivot
tables, numeric or non numeric data. What is harder is displaying text
response in the Data area of a pivot table.

We could give you a better hint if you showed us a small sample of the data
setup.

Place your cursor in the data, choose Date, PivotTable & PivotChart Report,
Finish.
Drag one of the desired grouping fields to the Row area, drag the response
field to the Colunm area and then drag the response field to the Data area a
second time. Excel will count the responses by group.