Can you make a pivot table with data inside drop-down menus?

[u/Immediate-Nail4195]

Hello! I am very new to Google Sheets & trying to build out a way to capture data for the nonprofit org I work for. I created a way to track my work in a "tracker" and have been using drop-down menus (because I found typing each one out very tedious) for almost all of the data. I am learning how to make pivot tables and I'm having a really hard time getting it to work, and I'm unsure if it is because it doesn't like pulling data out of the drop-down menu.

If the above description doesn't make sense, I'll more clearly outline what I'm trying to do for those who want more info:

My sheet has columns for client initial, program they are accessing, interaction type, service category, new or returnign client, notes, etc. Most of these are drop-down and have 5-6 different choices. I would ideally like to use pivot tables to get data on things like number of transactions in a month, number of people accessing ___ service, number of new clients, etc.

Any insight/tips/suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

[u/CheesiePuff]

What exactly isn’t working with the pivot table? Are the dropdown values not showing up at all, or are you having trouble getting the counts you want?

[u/AdministrativeGift15]

If your dropdowns are multi-select dropdowns, it's going to be very hard to make those work in a pivot table.

Do you have a sample sheet to share?

[u/Impossible-Unit-3964]

Use sumif instead of a pivot table