What is the purpose of a pivot table in Excel?

A pivot table in Excel serves primarily to summarize and analyze data from larger datasets, allowing users to extract significant patterns and insights easily. It enables the organization of complex information in a straightforward manner by aggregating and rearranging the data, such as calculating sums, averages, or counts, and presenting it in a concise format.

Users can also easily manipulate the layout of the data to focus on specific aspects, like filtering to show only relevant data points or rearranging fields to compare different variables side by side. This capability makes pivot tables powerful tools for data analysis, as they facilitate a deeper understanding of trends and relationships within the data without altering the original dataset, thus enhancing the user's decision-making process.

The other choices pertain to functions that are not the primary focus of pivot tables. For example, creating graphs and charts involves different features within Excel, while printing documents or formatting text is related to document preparation rather than data analysis.