We could simply type the number of columns we’d like to collapse in a cell, but let’s use a formula instead in case we ever want to make this a repeatable process. When we “unpivot” the data, we really are repeating each customer ID for each column that we want to collapse. Let’s take the following customer purchases table as our example. Step 1: Determine the Number of Columns to Collapse Please note, this method can be resource intensive if the dataset is too large. Luckily, if you need to have your spreadsheet consistently reformat data in a tidy format as part of a repetitive process, you can “unpivot” data in Excel just using formulas. How to unpivot data in excel using formulas And if you’re trying to keep things within Excel so your coworkers don’t have to use those other languages, it can be a real challenge. Unfortunately, Excel doesn’t have a single function or easy way to reformat a dataset into a tidy format, like R or the pandas library in Python. Generally, I find tidy data is much easier to analyze or necessary to upload data back into a database or pass along for more official analysis. Tidy data and situations where it helps to unpivot data in Excel using formulasĪlthough other ways of displaying data might be visually more pleasing, it can be advantageous to present data in a tidy format, where each row of data can have multiple variables, but only a single value.
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