After you create a pivot table in Excel 2007 you can add one or more fields to the Report Filters area. These fields can be used to limit the data that is summarized in the pivot table.

For example, instead of showing the sales results for the entire country, you can select one region or one state, and view only its sales results.

Or, focus on different types of businesses. In the screenshot shown below, the pivot table has two Report Filters. In the first filter, Farming is selected as the type of business. In the second filter, we're choosing Masonry as the building type. The pivot table will show the totals for Farms with Masonry buildings.

In this example, the pivot table has a field named BusType. This stores information about the type of busines. For example, the business could be Farming, Construction, Manufacturing, or another type of business.

In the pivot table, sometimes we want to see the data for all the business types, and sometimes we only want to see the data for a specific data type, such as Manufacturing. We'll add the BusType field to the Report Filter area.

1. In the PivotTable Field list, drag, the BusType field into the Report Filter box, as shown in the screen shot below.
2. On the worksheet, Excel adds the BusType field to the top of the pivot table, with the item (All) showing. The values in the pivot table do not change.

After you add a Report Filter, you can select an item from the filter, to change the data that is summarized in the Pivot Table.

1. Click the drop-down arrow to the right of the Report Filter to see a list of business types. Each business type from the source data is listed here, as you can see in the screen shot below.
2. You'd like to filter the data to see only the manufacturing business types, so click Manufacturing, and click OK.

Instead of selecting only one item from a Report Filter, you can also select multiple items. For example, office buildings and apartments are similar types of business, and you might like to see a combined total for these. You'll apply a filter to see both Apartment and Office Bldg policies.

1. In the pivot table, click the drop-down arrow for the BusType report filter.
2. At the bottom of the list, add a check mark next to Select Multiple Items, as shown in the screen shot below.
3. Check boxes appear beside the business type items, and the currently selected item is checked.
4. To quickly remove the check marks from all the items, click the (All) check box to remove its check mark. This clears all the check marks in the list. Note: Unless at least one item is selected, the OK button will not be available.
5. Add check marks to Apartment and Office Bldg.
6. Click OK to close the list and to apply the filter.

The BusType report filter now shows (Multiple Items), indicating that two or more items have been selected. The pivot table shows the summarized values for the apartment and office building policies.

After you're finished working with the filtered data in a pivot table, you can clear the Report Filters, to see all the data again.

1. In the pivot table, click on the drop down arrow for a Report Filter.
2. Click (All), to remove the filter criteria, and show all the data.
3. If other Report Filters have criteria applied, follow the same steps to clear their criteria.
   

There are answers to many common questions about Excel Pivot Tables and Pivot Charts at the Pivot Table FAQs page.

For another approach to filtering in a pivot table, see my article Filter the Source Data For a Pivot Table.