Measures and Dimensions in Reports

PivotTable reports in Excel consist of the following types of data - measures and dimensions.

  • Measures — These are the numeric values (excluding dates).

  • Dimensions — These are the categories by which to sort and group measures. These are non-numeric fields. Text and date fields are dimensions.

For example, a report lists employees in each office with total labor hours and labor costs for each month of the current year. Employees and office are dimensions; total labor hours and labor costs are measures.

Usually report columns consist of measures, and report rows consist of dimensions. In an Excel PivotTable report, measures and dimensions can be placed as either columns or rows.