How to Group and Summarize Data in Excel: 14 Steps

2025 Author: Jason Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2025-01-23 12:04

This wikiHow teaches you how to group parts of data in Excel so you can hide them in a document. This method is useful if you have large documents with a lot of data. You can group and summarize data in Excel on both Windows and Mac versions.

Step

Part 1 of 2: Automatically Summarize

Step 1. Open the Excel document

Double-click the Excel document to open it.

Step 2. Click the Data tab

It's to the left of the green ribbon at the top of the Excel window. This will open the toolbar below the ribbon.

Step 3. Click the bottom of the Group button

This button can be found on the right side of the ribbon Data. A drop-down menu will appear.

Step 4. Click Auto Outline

It's in the drop-down menu Group.

If a box appears saying "Cannot create an outline", your data does not contain formulas that can be summarized. You need to summarize the data manually

Step 5. Minimize the data view

Click button [-] at the top or left of the Excel spreadsheet to hide groups of data. In most cases, this step will only display the last row of data.

Step 6. Eliminate summaries if necessary

Click Ungroup to the right of the selection Group, then click Clear Outline… on the drop-down menu. This step removes the grouping of data and returns the previously summarized or grouped data.

Part 2 of 2: Manually Summarizing

Step 1. Select data

Click and drag the cursor from the top left cell of the data you want to group to the bottom right cell.

Step 2. Click Data if this tab is not already open

It's on the left side of the green ribbon at the top of the Excel window.

Step 3. Click Groups

It is located on the right side of the toolbar Data.

Step 4. Click Groups…

This option is in the drop-down menu Group.

Step 5. Select the data group

Click Rows to summarize data vertically or click Columns to summarize data horizontally.

Step 6. Click OK

It's at the bottom of the window that appears.

Step 7. Shrink the data view

Click button [-] at the top or left of the Excel spreadsheet to hide groups of data. In most cases, this step will only display the last row of data.

Step 8. Eliminate summaries if necessary

Click Ungroup to the right of the selection Group, then click Clear Outline… on the drop-down menu. This step removes the data grouping and returns the previously summarized or grouped data.

Tips

You cannot use this function for shared spreadsheets

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