Excel - Subtotal Outline Details Not Showing 05/15/15

Excel 2013 Tip - Subtotal Outline Details Aren't Showing

For those of you familiar with creating subtotals in an Excel spreadsheet, this tip might interest you.

What are subtotals?

The Subtotal feature in Excel will display columns of similar information in groups and can perform functions such as adding or counting the number of similar data items in the column.  In the example below, each time the Location Code changes, the Subtotal feature will count the number of employees from each of the Location groups.  In this example, there are 4 employees at Location Code 001, and there are 7 employees at Location Code 002.  Totaling 11 employees at both locations.

	Location	Name	Job Description
	001	Employee1	Early College HS Tchr
	001	Employee2	Early College HS Tchr
	001	Employee3	Sec Speech Teacher
	001	Employee4	TEST COORDINATOR
001 Count	4		4
	002	Employee5	Sec Geography Teacher
	002	Employee6	CTE Marketing Management II
	002	Employee7	Sec Math Teacher HS
	002	Employee8	Sec English Teacher
	002	Employee9	Sec English Teacher
	002	Employee10	Sec Biology Teacher
	002	Employee11	Sec History Teacher
002 Count	7		7
Grand Count	11		11

How do I add Subtotals to an Excel spreadsheet?

1. Select all the cells with data 
2. Click the Data Tab at the top
3. Click Subtotal in the Outline group on the right
4. Click OK
5. Choose the column on which you want to create the groups from the drop menu for "At each change in:"
6. Choose the function.  Some common functions are:
• Sum will total the amount in each group in the designated column
• Count will count the number of rows in each group in the designated column
• Average will average the total amount in each group in the designated column
7. Choose the column where the group data is located
8. Click OK

What if the Subtotal Outline doesn't appear on the left like the example above?

The default setting in previous versions Excel displayed the outline on the left (which included the Count and the Grand Total Count like the example above).  However, in Excel 2013 your default setting appears to have changed.  As a result of this change, the outline on the left does not appear unless you change the settings for Excel.  Here's how to do this.

In Excel 2013, do the following:

1. Click File-->Options
2. From the Excel Options window, click Advanced on the left
3. Scroll a little over halfway down until you see "Display options for this worksheet"
4. Click to check the option for "Show outline symbols if an outline is applied"