Creating an “Outline” automatically

In “Excel”, we can make an “Outline” to display a summary of a lot of data. Outlines appear best when there is a certain structure in the data of our spreadsheet.
The easiest way to make an “Outline” in Excel is through the “Auto Outline” option. Just click the downward pointing arrow under “Group” in the ribbon under the tab “Data” in the ribbon.

When we use the “Auto Outline” option, Excel will use the formulas in the “Worksheet”, to make an outline of rows, columns, or both.

 

Since in below example, I only use formulas in columns to calculate the totals for the quarters, the result of the “Auto Outline” feature will only be based solely on those columns.

 

To make an automatic overview, first select a cell in the range from which you want to make a list. Then click the downward pointing arrow under “Group” and choose “Auto Outline”. This shows the summary at the top of the worksheet. We can use the buttons Plus, Min, 1 and 2 to show or hide details. More on this in the next lesson.
Buttons 1 and 2 determine the level of detail. A maximum of 8 levels.

 

If I had in my table also formulas in rows, for example the totals for months, then the result of “Auto Outline” would have been based on columns (1) and rows (2).

 

Manually creating an overview

A second way to make an overview is to do it manually.

Suppose we only want a summary of sales in Europe.

Then first select the range, without titles and totals, and click the button “Group” in the ribbon. Check the box “Rows” in the dialog “Group”, and click OK.

 

We can repeat this for each group. And finally again for all groups together.

This gives us an overview with three levels.

 

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