Which product sells best? Ask Excel two questions

At our imaginary market stall, cards sell the most pieces while posters bring in the most money. Both could reasonably be called bestsellers. Two questions will turn that vague description into a pair of useful summaries.

Analyze Data answers natural-language questions using AI services.[1]

This is a documentation-based exercise checked on 29 October 2026. The data are invented and the expected totals independently calculated; we did not run the Excel interface.

Use Excel for Microsoft 365 on Windows. Microsoft also documents Mac/web. Subscriber access covers English, French, Spanish, German, Simplified Chinese and Japanese; natural-language queries are rolling out regionally.[1]

Give the two measures clear names

Enter this original practice dataset in columns Session, Product, Units and Revenue GBP, in that order. Each row summarises one product during one selling session; it does not represent one customer. Revenue GBP records sales revenue in pounds. Enter the values as numbers, leaving the currency name in the header.

• Morning, Notebooks, 12, 60
• Morning, Cards, 30, 45
• Morning, Posters, 6, 72
• Afternoon, Notebooks, 18, 90
• Afternoon, Cards, 24, 36
• Afternoon, Posters, 9, 108

Select your data; Home → Format as Table. Choose a style and confirm the first row contains headers. Then select a cell and Home → Analyze Data.[1][2]

Ask for units, then revenue

For this example, ask “Sum of Units by Product”, then “Sum of Revenue GBP by Product”. These are suggested practice questions, not recorded responses.

Insert a returned table or PivotTable.[1]

Alternatively, select “Which fields interest you the most?”: Product → Not a value; Units → Sum. Repeat with Revenue GBP → Sum.[1]

Keep the two results separately labelled: “Units sold by product” and “Sales revenue by product (£)”. Both should combine morning and afternoon. A result split by Session would answer a different question; inspect the grouping before accepting it.

Check the answer against the stall

The independent arithmetic gives these totals; they are not observed Excel output:

• Cards: 54 units; £81 revenue.
• Notebooks: 30 units; £150 revenue.
• Posters: 15 units; £180 revenue.

Cards should lead the units ranking, followed by notebooks and posters. Revenue reverses the first and last places: posters lead, notebooks remain second and cards finish third. The rankings disagree because the measures answer different questions.

Trace one result back to its rows: cards sold 30 in the morning and 24 in the afternoon, making 54. Their revenue was £45 + £36 = £81. Across all products, the two summaries should total 99 units and £411.

A count of rows would give two for every product. That tells you how many product-session records appear, not how many items were sold. If the output shows equal counts, inspect whether it counted records instead of summing the requested measure.

The completed workbook should preserve the six original rows and two named summaries you can explain. For this stall, cards moved the most stock and posters generated the most revenue. Profit remains unanswered because the example contains no costs.

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