Creating Table to Give Reports

[Justin]

I don't know how to give a better title, unfortunately. I want to
create a spreadsheet that I can mine for data. But my knowledge of
pivot tables leads me to think that the sheet that I have created won't
work. I have data in rows and columns. Each column is information
about a conference as follows:
*Conference Company
*Conference Name
*Conference Date
*Conference Location
*Conference Topic

Each row is a sponsoring company name and industry. I have different
designations to indicate what kind of sponsorship/participation the
sponsoring company had. So a company would have an X or other mark if
they sponsored a particular conference. I would like to be able to
sort the data in both the rows and the columns somehow. This would be
a vast improvement to another method that I tried (Each row is distinct
and lists:
*Sponsoring Company
*Conference
*Conference Company
etc etc)
although that method works better for pivot tables.

Part of the reporting that I want to be able to do is to look at a
company and see how many events they sponsor per month, or how many
events they are involved in for a certain topic or company. Is the
long method (perhaps with some modifications) going to be my best shot
or can I make the table work?

In a related question, if I have a number or date in a cell (say
1/1/06) how do I drag it down without Excel auto-incrementing it up (to
1/2/06, 1/3/06 etc etc)

Thank you all for your help.

 

[Debra Dalgleish]

As you mentioned, the second method would be better for creating a pivot
table. With that, you can view the data in many different layouts, and
it would be much more flexible than the first table method.

To autofill without incrementing the date, hold the Ctrl key as you dray
the Fill handle.