Excel Pivot Pop: free pivot table game to practise Excel

What is Excel Pivot Pop?

Pip & Pine, a made-up home shop, dumps a messy list of orders on you with one question: which region sold the most, how many Rugs went to the South? Drag Month, Region, Product, Units and Revenue into Rows, Columns and Values, pick Sum, Count or Average, and build the pivot table that answers it. Then tap the cell with the answer.

Excel Pivot Pop is a free pivot table game. Each round deals a messy, unsorted list of orders from Pip & Pine, a made-up home shop, and asks one question: which region brought in the most revenue, which month had the fewest orders, how many Rugs were sold in the South? You answer the way an analyst would, by building a pivot table.

Drag Month, Region, Product, Units or Revenue into Rows, Columns and Values, or tap a field and then a box. Choose Sum, Count or Average, press Build, and the pivot is calculated from the table on screen. If the layout is right, tap the cell that holds the answer for a bonus. Questions ramp from one field and a Sum to Counts, Averages and two-way grids.

At a glance

Category

Skillz

Difficulty

Medium

Play time

3–5 min

Price

Free, in your browser, sign-up optional

How to play

Read the question

A fresh, unsorted sales table each round, and one question about it.

Build the pivot

Drag fields into Rows, Columns and Values, or tap a field then a box. Keyboard: Enter on a field, then R, C or V.

Pick the maths

Values can Sum, Count or Average. Tap the button under the field to switch. One field per box.

Score

100 for a right layout, up to 50 for speed and a streak bonus, then +50 for tapping the cell with the answer. A wrong layout or the clock costs one of 3 lives.

Scoring

A right layout scores 100 points, plus up to 50 for time left and up to 50 for a streak. Tapping the cell that holds the answer adds 50 more.

A wrong layout or running out of time costs one of 3 lives. The clock drops from 75 to 45 seconds as the questions move from one field to two-way grids.

What it trains

Pivot tables

Turning a plain-English question into Rows, Columns and Values.

Sum, Count, Average

Choosing the right calculation: totals, number of orders, or the average order.

Reading a summary

Finding the one cell that answers the question, not the Grand Total.

Strategy and tips

Find the grouping word

"Which region…", "per month", "for each product": the field after which or per goes in Rows.

Count the orders

"How many orders" means Count. Count counts rows, so any field in Values works.

Average is per order

"Biggest average order" means Average: each group's total divided by its number of orders.

Two fields, a grid

When a question names two things, like a product and a region, put one in Rows and one in Columns. Either way round is fine.

Ignore the totals

The Grand Total row and column sum everything. The answer sits inside the grid.

Why play Excel Pivot Pop?

Pivot tables are the fastest way to answer questions about a long list without writing a single formula, and they're in every spreadsheet app. The hard part isn't clicking, it's knowing which field groups and which one gets added up. Excel Pivot Pop trains exactly that translation, from a plain-English question to Rows, Columns and Values, on a fresh table every round.

Frequently asked questions