Excel: Manually Apply Groups

This page is an advertiser-supported excerpt of the book, Power Excel 2010-2013 from MrExcel - 567 Excel Mysteries Solved. If you like this topic, please consider buying the entire e-book.


Problem: Those group and outline symbols shown in the last topic are cool. Is there any other way to get those? Can I apply them without using subtotals?

Strategy: You just select columns or rows to be grouped and select Data, Group. It is fairly tedious to add many groupings, but this can be easier than continually hiding and unhiding rows or columns.

Below, select the entire column for Jan, Feb, and Mar and click the Group icon on the Data tab. Excel will group those 3 columns and assumes the next column is the summary of those columns.

  1. Grouping Jan, Feb, Mar into an existing Q1 column.

    Repeat this to group April, May, and June into Q2; July, August, September into Q3; and October, November, and December into Q4. The result is that you can quickly toggle from monthly to quarterly views by using the 1 or 2 buttons.

  2. Use the 1 button to collapse.