In addition to grouping data by date and time factors, Pivot Tables also gives us the possibility to pretty much create grouping on our own, sort of an ad hoc way. We're looking at the worksheet called OtherGrouping in our file 13-PivotTables. Imagine if somebody asks us to group data by the east region. Now, we don't really have an east region, we've got a northeast, we've got a southeast. You can move fields. For example, if we want to move southeast next to northeast, just click that cell, drag its bottom edge.

Those two fields are now adjacent, northeast and southeast. The date is together. Suppose we want to create a grouping called East. Select just the two labels, Right-Click Group. Suddenly, we see a new row in the term GROUP 1. That's not very meaningful, so let's just call it East. Recognize there's a minus in front of it. Let's click the minus and before doing that, look at the total. We got a northeast and a southeast. This total here is going to be about 4000 or so. Let's just click the minus, what happens? There is the total.

What we're seeing here is the total of the northeast and the southeast with no detail. If we group the east that way we probably want to group the west similarly. So, drag across northwest and southwest and here too, Right-Click and Group and we'll simply change that word group to West. We're going to type right over. Now, we can collapse the west as well. So, for the moment we're seeing East and West, new grouping that didn't really exist in our original data. In the Pivot Table field list to the right, recognize that we now have a field called Region2.

You might leave that there or click on it, give it a different name, maybe east-west or something like that to differentiate a bit. So, we now have the ability to view this list whenever we wish in the East, West breakout or in the four breakout region the way we saw it earlier. So, we can create our groupings in an ad hoc kind of way. We can also do this with data in the Row Labels area. So, if we simply want to group these two, maybe these are the two bamboo items, we're going to bring out that idea. So highlight those two, Right-Click>Group.

You see the term Group1 again, let me just type in Bamboo. There we are, and we could collapse that. So, we got our Bamboo total and then the other ones we haven't grouped just yet, maybe we won't but we have that capability. So, grouping sort of on the fly or in kind of an ad hoc way, we can do this easily in a Pivot Table simply by selecting the two, Right-Clicking and choosing Group.