It's probably fair to say that the take-up in authoring Excel workbooks using Excel Online has probably not exactly been immense. There are various reasons for this - most developers start building their files on the desktop, they don't know about Excel Online, they have no plans to share or some of the features required are not available in the Excel Online variant.

Well, Microsoft has removed one of the obstacles with that final reason.

You can now insert a new PivotTable in Excel Online. Simply have your data in tabular form, select it in the usual way and simply click on the 'PivotTable' icon in the 'Insert' tab of the Ribbon, then follow the usual instructions. 

It's not all peaches and cream yet though. Excel Online wouldn't be Excel Online without a couple of quirks. As highlighted in our graphic (right), you cannot use data from external sources to populate your PivotTable, add to the Data Model or use data in the Data Model. But hey, it's a good start and better than not being able to do it at all! 

We'll be detailing this update in our April newsletter. If you are not already a subscriber, why not sign up at the bottom of any SumProduct web page? And if you're not that familiar with PivotTables (where have you been!?), you can check out our Thought article on PivotTables in Excel >here.