Why would you want to use Excel tables? Why not just stick with Excel ranges or just leave the data in rows and columns as is? For one thing, tables allow you to add rows to the bottom of the table and have your charts update automatically. Formulas also update automatically. Your pivot tables and formatting will update automatically also. Tables are convenient.

There is a YouTube video by Leila that talks about the advantages of tables in excel. It is at time 12:30 in the video called 7 Things You’re Doing WRONG⚡in Excel by Leila Gharani.

You can delete table rows without deleting entire rows. So if you have some data or text or anything to the right of your table and you need to keep that information, you can easily select cells inside the table, right mouse click, Delete, Table Rows.

An Example that Could Be Better

Below is a screenshot of a table that I created and named as tblSales. The amount of data is intentionally small. I also created a chart based only on the last two columns and a total formula below the table. I have used =FORMULATEXT(C10) in cell C11 to show what the formula is. Notice that it uses a table reference. Notice that Meats and Produce each occur twice in the chart.

Let’s create a pivot table. We need to do some aggregation here.