7917631 excel-pivot-tables-in-excel-2003

480 of 853 LEARN EXCEL FROM MR EXCEL

Thanks for buying the clean dataset Learn customer information on every
Result: You have a 2nd edition of with Excel from MrExcel. The
screenshots in that Fig. 840. from can sort this data are here, then you must
row, as shown in book are You Excel 2007. If you and otherwise use it
have Excel 97-Excel 2003.
for data analysis.

Since the pivot table interface changed dramatically in Excel 2007, I am
providing this PDF of the original book so that you can follow along with
screen shots that look more like your version of Excel.

This material is copyright 2005 by Bill Jelen. All rights reserved. This is an
excerpt from Learn Excel from MrExcel (ISBN 978-1-932802-12-2). The
excerpt is made available to customers who own the 2nd edition: Learn
Fig. 840
Excel 2007 from MrExcel (ISBN 978-1-932802-27-6).
Summary: A couple of formulas with IF functions help to snap this data
If you have this file without owning a copy of the book, please visit MrExcel.
into shape.
com to sign up for the free preview offer so that you can obtain other
chapters from Discussed: =IF(); =LEFT(); =MID()
Commands either book.

USE A PIVOT TABLE
TO SUMMARIZE DETAILED DATA
Problem: You have 50,000 rows of sales data, as shown in Fig. 841.
You want to produce a summary report showing sales by region and
product.

Fig. 841

Part 3: WRANGLING DATA 481 of 853

Strategy: Use a pivot table. As Excel’s most powerful feature, pivot
tables are well suited to this type of analysis. Follow these steps.
1) Ensure that your data is in list format. It is important that every
heading be unique.
2) Select a single cell in the database. From the Data menu, select
Pivot Table and Pivot Chart Report….
3) Choose Next in Wizard Step 1 to conﬁrm that your data is in Excel,
as shown in Fig. 842.

Part
III

Fig. 842

4) In Step 2, Excel’s intellisense will guess the range of your data. It
is usually correct. Choose Next, as shown in Fig. 843.

Fig. 843


5) In Wizard Step 3, choose the Layout button in the lower left corner,

Fig. 844

You will now see the powerful layout dialog. As shown in Fig. 845, all
of your available ﬁelds are along the right side of the dialog. On the left
side of the dialog is a template where you can drop various ﬁelds.

Fig. 845


To build your pivot table, you will drag a ﬁeld to the proper location. In
this case you will want to have products going down the side of the re-
port and regions going across the top.
6) Drag the Product ﬁeld from the Field list and drop it in the Row
area of the layout, as shown in Fig. 846.

Part
III

Fig. 846


7) Drag the Region field from the Field list and drop it in the Column
area of the layout, as shown in Fig. 847.

Fig. 847

8) Drag the Revenue field to the Data area of the layout. When you
drop a field in the Data area of the layout, Excel chooses a default
operation. In this case, Excel correctly chose Sum of Revenue, as
shown in Fig. 848. However, if Excel encounters any cells with text
or blanks, it will instead choose to use Count of Revenue.


Part
III
Fig. 848

9) If Excel’s guess for the function in the Data area is incorrect, dou-
ble click the ﬁeld to display the PivotTable Field dialog, as shown
in Fig. 849. Select the correct function for summarization. Choose
OK to close the Layout dialog. You will be back in Step 3 of the
Wizard.

Fig. 849


10) As shown in Fig. 850, you are given a choice of creating the pivot
table on a new sheet or in a blank section of the current worksheet.
For this example, choose to have the pivot table on a new sheet.

Fig. 850

11) Click OK. In a few seconds, the 50,000 rows of data will be summa-
rized and presented on a new worksheet, as shown in Fig. 851.

Fig. 851

Additional Details: Pivot tables offer many powerful options. Although
this chapter offers the steps to create your ﬁrst pivot table, you should
read the next several cases to learn more about pivot tables.
Summary: The pivot table command allows you to summarize thou-
sands of rows of data quickly. It does not require you to know any for-
mulas. You just need to be able to drag ﬁelds to a report.
Commands Discussed: Data – Pivot Table


YOUR MANAGER WANTS
YOUR REPORT CHANGED
Problem: You present your ﬁrst pivot table report, as shown in Fig.
852, to your manager. He says, “This is almost perfect, but could you
have the products going across the top and the regions going down the
side?”

Part
III

Fig. 852

Strategy: Pivot tables make this easy.
1) On the worksheet, click on the gray Product ﬁeld, then drag and
drop it next to Region, as shown in Fig. 853.

Fig. 853


2) When you release the mouse button, the pivot table will instantly
redraw, as shown in Fig. 854.

Fig. 854

3) Using the mouse, grab the gray Region ﬁeld, then drag and drop it
to the left of cell A4, as shown in Fig. 855.

Fig. 855

4) When you release the mouse button, the pivot table will redraw, as
shown in Fig. 856.

Fig. 856


Result: With two movements of the mouse, you have created a new re-
port for the manager.
Additional Details: Watch the mouse pointer as you drag fields around
a pivot table. There are five possible cursors. As shown in Fig. 857, the
blue portion of the cursor shows where the field will be dropped when
you release the mouse button. In the following image, the first cursor
shows a field about to be dropped in the Row area. The second cursor
shows a field about to be dropped in the Column area. The third cursor
shows a field about to be dropped in the Data area. The fourth cursor
shows a field about to be dropped in the Page area (discussed later). The
fifth cursor shows a field about to be removed from the pivot table – this
happens if you drag the field too far outside of the boundary of the pivot
table.

Part
Fig. 857
III
Summary: The first amazing feature of pivot tables is that they can
summarize massive amounts of data very quickly. This topic shows the
second amazing feature – pivot tables can be quickly changed to show
another view of the data.

MOVE OR CHANGE PART OF A PIVOT TABLE
Problem: If you try to insert a row in a pivot table, you are greeted with
a message saying that you cannot change, move, or insert cells in a pivot
table, as shown in Fig. 858.

Fig. 858


Strategy: This is correct; you cannot do a lot of things to a ﬁnished
pivot table. While the ﬂexibility of pivot tables is awesome, sometimes
you just want to take the results of the pivot table and turn off the pivot
features. If you want to take the data and re-use it somewhere else, you
can convert the pivot table to regular data using Paste Special Values.
Follow these steps.
1) Select the entire pivot table, as shown in Fig. 859. Be sure to in-
clude the two blank rows at the top of the table (known as the Page
area).

Fig. 859

2) Hit Ctrl+C to copy.
3) From the menu,
select Edit – Paste
Special – Values –
OK, as shown in
Fig. 860.

Fig. 860


This action will change the pivot table from a live pivot table to just
values in cells. You can now insert rows and columns to your heart’s
content, as shown in Fig. 861.

Fig. 861

Summary: When doing data analysis, it is common to use a pivot table
to get the result, but then to convert the pivot table from a live table to Part
static values using Paste Special Values. III
Commands Discussed: Data – Pivot Table; Edit – Paste Special

SEE DETAIL BEHIND
ONE NUMBER IN A PIVOT TABLE
Problem: One number in the Pivot Table seems to be wrong. For ex-
ample, maybe the Government region does not typically buy a certain
product line from you, yet they are shown with that product in the re-
port, as shown in Fig. 862.

Fig. 862


Strategy: You can see the detail behind any number in a pivot table by
double-clicking on the number. If the $10,290 in sales of product ABC to
the government seems unusual, double-click cell E5. As shown in Fig.
863, a new worksheet is inserted with all of the records that make up
the $10,290. In this case, it is just one record, which seems to have been
coded to the wrong region.

Fig. 863

Additional Information: If you double-click on a number in the total
row or total column, you will see all of the records that make up that
number. Drilling down on E8 in the original pivot table will show the
records that make up the $34,975, as shown in Fig. 864.

Fig. 864

Gotcha: Each drill down creates a new worksheet. The new worksheet
is just a snapshot in time of what made up the original number. If you
detect a wrong number in the drill down report, you need to go back to
the original data to make the correction.
Summary: Given the power to summarize data in a pivot table, you are
likely to spot information that might point to a problem in the underly-
ing data. With 50,000 rows of data, it is likely that someone miscoded
the region on a few of the records. Until you look at a pivot table with a
quick summary, it is hard to spot obvious problems like the one shown
here. When you see a number that seems suspicious in a pivot table,
double-click the number to drill down and see the records behind the
data.


UPDATE DATA BEHIND A PIVOT TABLE
Problem: You discovered that some of the underlying data in the pivot
table is wrong. After correcting the number, the pivot table does not ap-
pear to include the change, as shown in Fig. 865.

Part
III

Fig. 865

Strategy: This is one of the important things to understand about pivot
tables. When you create the pivot table, all of the data is loaded into
memory to allow it to calculate quickly. When you change the data on the
original worksheet, it does not automatically update the pivot table.
Select a cell in the pivot table. The PivotTable toolbar will appear. As
shown in Fig. 866, choose the Red exclamation point on the toolbar to
recalculate the pivot table from the worksheet data.

Fig. 866


Result: The pivot table is updated, as shown in Fig. 867.

Fig. 867

Additional Details: If you make changes to the underlying data, it
could cause the table to grow. For example, if you re-classify some re-
cords from the East region to the Southeast region, be aware that choos-
ing the Refresh button will cause the table to grow by one column. If
there happens to be other data in that column, Excel will warn you and
ask if it is OK to overwrite those cells, as shown in Fig. 868.

Fig. 868

Summary: Changes to the underlying data do not automatically get
calculated in the pivot table. You must choose the red exclamation icon
in the toolbar to have Excel re-read the original data.


REPLACE BLANKS
IN A PIVOT TABLE WITH ZEROES
Problem: Since you had no sales of a particular product in a particular
region, Excel leaves those cells in the pivot table blank, as shown in Fig.
869. This seems like a really bad idea. You’ve learned in this book that if
your data has blanks instead of zeroes, Excel will assume that a column
is a text column. It is really ironic that Microsoft would dare to use a
blank cell in the middle of numeric results.

Part
III

Fig. 869

Strategy: When pivot tables ﬁrst came out, there was no way to correct
this. After much outcry from accountants everywhere, Microsoft gave us
two ways to solve the problem.


Method 1: If you discover the problem after the fact in a completed
pivot table, follow these steps.
1) Select one cell in the pivot table in order to display the PivotTable
toolbar. From the toolbar, use the PivotTable dropdown and select
the Table Options menu item, as shown in Fig. 870.

Fig. 870

2) In the Table Options dialog, on the right side, locate the ﬁeld called
For Empty Cells, Show:, as shown in Fig. 871.


Part
III

Fig. 871

3) By default, this setting is
blank. Type a zero in the
textbox and choose OK, as
shown in Fig. 872.

Fig. 872


Result: As you see in Fig. 873, blanks in the data section of the pivot
table are shown as zeroes.

Fig. 873

Method 2: The other method for having zeroes appear is to use the Op-
tions button in Step 3 of the PivotTable Wizard, as shown in Fig. 874.
This button will open the same Options dialog as shown above.

Fig. 874

Summary: Make sure to use the Options dialog to display empty cells
as zeroes instead of blanks.


ADD OR REMOVE FIELDS
FROM AN EXISTING PIVOT TABLE
Problem: You’ve seen how easy it is to rearrange an existing pivot table,
swapping Region and Product fields, as shown in Fig. 875. Now, what if
you want to replace the Region field with the Customer field?

Part
III

Fig. 875

Strategy: In order to remove the Re-
gion field from the pivot table, click
on the gray Region button and drag
it off the pivot table, as shown in Fig.
876. The mouse pointer will eventu-
ally change to include a red X, which is
synonymous with Delete.

Fig. 876


This will remove the Region ﬁeld from the pivot table, as shown in
Fig. 877.

Fig. 877

Select any cell in the pivot table and the PivotTable Field List will ap-
pear. This list is one of the things that look different in various versions
of Excel. In Excel 2002 and 2003, the list is a ﬂoating box, as shown in
Fig. 878, that appears when you select a cell in the pivot table.

Fig. 878

In Excel 2000 and earlier versions, the Field List appears as a part of
the PivotTable toolbar, as shown in Fig. 879. The toolbar expands when-
ever you select a cell in the pivot table.


Fig. 879
Part
III
To add the customer ﬁeld, drag the ﬁeld from the Field List and drop it
in the correct area on the pivot table, as shown in Fig. 880.

Fig. 880


Result: The new field is added to the pivot table, as shown in Fig. 881.

Fig. 881

Summary: It is easy to remove or add fields to the pivot table by using
the mouse to drag the field off or on the table.

SUMMARIZE PIVOT TABLE DATA
BY THREE MEASURES
Problem: You want to summarize data by Region, Product, and Cus-
tomer. How can a two-dimensional report show three dimensions of
data?
Strategy: Several views of the data are possible. From the PivotTable
Field List, drag the Region field and drop it in the Row area of the pivot
table, to the left of the Customer field, as shown in Fig. 882.


Part
III

Fig. 882


Another option is to drag the third measure to the Column area of the
pivot table, as shown in Fig. 883.

Fig. 883

Even with this view, the report looks different if you move the Region
field and drop it to the right of the Product field, as shown in Fig. 884.

Fig. 884

Summary: You can use more than one field along either the row or col-
umn axis of the pivot table to produce more complex summaries.


MAKE PIVOT TABLES BE TALLER THAN WIDE
Problem: An Excel worksheet has 256 columns and 65,536 rows. As
you start adding fields to a pivot table, it is possible to quickly run out of
columns, as shown in Fig. 885. If you want a report with products, cus-
tomers and regions, it can quickly get large. Three Regions x 10 Prod-
ucts x 300 customers would require 900 columns.

Fig. 885

Strategy: Make your pivot tables tall instead of wide. If you have most Part
of the measures in the Row area of the pivot table, it is far less likely III
that you will run out of room for the table.
As shown in Fig. 886, this 668-row table fits fine going down the rows,
but would fail if we tried to have it going across the columns.

Fig. 886


Summary: If you are going to have a combination of fields that will be
larger than 255 columns, build the table to have these fields going down
the rows.

MANUALLY RESEQUENCE THE ORDER
OF DATA IN A PIVOT TABLE
Problem: A Pivot Table organizes data alphabetically by default. For
the Region field, this means that the data is organized with Central first,
East second, and West third, as shown in Fig. 887. Your manager wants
the regions to appear in the order of “East, Central, West”. Unless you
can convince the company to change the name of the Central region to
the Middle region, the regions will not appear in the proper order. After
unsuccessfully lobbying to have the Central region renamed to Middle,
you need to find a way to have the following table sequenced with the
East region first.

Fig. 887

Strategy: It is amazing that this trick works.
1) Select cell B4 in the pivot table, as shown in Fig. 888.

Fig. 888


2) Right in cell B4, start typing the word “East”, as shown in
Fig. 889.

Fig. 889

3) When you hit Enter, Excel senses what you are trying to do. All of
the data from the East region moves to Column B. Excel automati-
cally moves the Central region heading and data to column C, as
shown in Fig. 890.

Part
III

Fig. 890

You can easily use this trick to resequence the ﬁelds into whatever order
is necessary.
Additional Details: The technique shown above will only change the
Region sequence in a single pivot table. If you would like to change the
sequence in all future pivot tables, create a custom list.
1) In a blank area of the worksheet, type your regions in the desired
order in a column. Enter East in one cell, Central in the next cell,
and West in the next cell. Select these three cells.


2) From the menu, select Tools – Options. Go to the Custom Lists
tab. At the bottom of the Custom Lists tab, there is a section called
Import List from Cells. Your selected range will be in this ﬁeld. As
shown in Fig. 891, choose the Import button to add a custom list of
East, Central, West.

Fig. 891

All future pivot tables will automatically sort into East, Central, West
sequence.
Summary: The manual sort feature of a pivot table is astounding. Sim-
ply type a heading in a new place to have Excel turn on manual sequenc-
ing of the data.


PRESENT A PIVOT TABLE
IN HIGH-TO-LOW ORDER BY REVENUE
Problem: A Pivot Table organizes data alphabetically by default, as
shown in Fig. 892. You want to produce a report sorted high-to-low by
Revenue.

Part
III
Fig. 892

Strategy: Each pivot field offers
a sort option. To access the Sort
options for the pivot field, follow
these steps.
1) As shown in Fig. 893, double-
click the Customer field in Fig. 893
the pivot table.
2) This brings up the
PivotTable Field
dialog. Choose the
Advanced button
on the right side, as
shown in Fig. 894.

Fig. 894


3) As shown the PivotTable Field Advanced Options dialog in Fig. 895,
you can see that the default sort is Manual. This option lets you
resequence items by dragging or retyping. In the current example,
you want to choose Descending.

Fig. 895

4) Use the dropdown in
the Using Field: area to
choose to order by Sum
of Revenue, as shown in
Fig. 896.

Result: The report is se-
quenced with the largest cus-
tomers at the top, as shown in
Fig. 897. Fig. 896

Fig. 897


Summary: The AutoSort options are fairly well hidden, but offer a va-
riety of sorting options for each ﬁeld in a pivot table.
Commands Discussed: Data – PivotTable – AutoSort

LIMIT A PIVOT REPORT
TO SHOW JUST THE TOP 12 CUSTOMERS
Problem: Many times, a customer report will have hundreds of custom-
ers. If you are preparing a report for the senior vice president of sales, he
may not care about the 400 customers who bought spare batteries this
month. For most of the senior vice presidents of sales that I know, they
like to see only the top 10 or 20 customers each month.
Strategy: There is a Top 10 AutoShow feature available in pivot tables.
Part
Follow these steps.
III
1) Double-click the Customer ﬁeld in the pivot table. This brings up
the PivotTable Field dialog. Choose the Advanced button, as shown
in Fig. 898.

Fig. 898


2) This brings up the PivotTable Field Advanced Options. On the right
side of this dialog is the Top 10 AutoShow, as shown in Fig. 899. By
default, this feature is turned off for each ﬁeld. Click to turn this
option on.

Fig. 899

3) Although it is called the “Top 10” feature, it is far more ﬂexible. You
can show either the Top or Bottom customers. The spin button can
be used to change 10 to any number. Select Top and 12, as shown
in Fig. 900.

Fig. 900


4) Choose OK to close the Advance dialog. Choose OK to close the
Field dialog.
Result: The report will be filtered to show just the top 12 customers, as
shown in Fig. 901.

Part
III

Fig. 901

Additional Information: It is not obvious from this book, but the cus-
tomer heading is in a blue font to indicate that the customer list has
been filtered.
Gotcha: If there is a tie for twelfth place, the list may contain 13 cus-
tomers. I have seen situations where the pivot table is limited to one
obscure product that was only purchased by a few customers. This can
create a huge multi-way tie at $0 for twelfth place, resulting in hun-
dreds of customers in the report.
Summary: The AutoShow option allows you to dynamically limit a re-
port to the top five or bottom 12 items in a report.
Commands Discussed: Data – PivotTable – AutoShow


QUICKLY PRODUCE REPORTS
FOR EACH REGION
Problem: You need to send a customer report to each regional manager
in your company, as shown in Fig. 902. You want each manager to see
sales only in his region.

Fig. 902

Strategy: The Page Field area of the pivot table can enable such a re-
port. Drag the Region ﬁeld from the PivotTable Field List and drop it
above the pivot table, in the area called Drop Page Fields Here, as shown
in Fig. 903.

Fig. 903

At ﬁrst glance, nothing has really changed. All of the numbers in the
pivot table are the same, as shown in Fig. 904.


Fig. 904

However, if you use the dropdown next to Region to select the East re-
gion, the report will update to show just the customers from the East
region, as shown in Fig. 905. Print this report and send it to the East
regional manager. Part
III

Fig. 905

To produce the report for Central, simply change the Region dropdown
from East to Central. Repeat for each region.
Summary: Using Page Fields allows you to quickly ﬁlter a report to one
choice from a given ﬁeld.
Commands Discussed: Pivot Table – Page Fields


CREATE AN AD-HOC REPORTING TOOL
Problem: You have an operations manager who is famous for asking
many ad-hoc questions. One day, he will want to know who bought XYZ
product. The next day, he will want to know all sales to Air Canada.
Strategy: Build a pivot table report with many fields in the Page Field
area, as shown in Fig. 906. The manager can use this to answer just
about any ad-hoc query that he can dream up.

Fig. 906

The operations manager can eas-
ily figure out how many ABC
products were shipped to the
East Region on a given date, as
shown in Fig. 907.
Summary: Using many Page
Fields allows you to quickly fil-
ter a report to answer ad-hoc
queries.
Commands Discussed: Pivot
Table – Page Fields

Fig. 907


CREATE A UNIQUE LIST OF CUSTOMERS
WITH A PIVOT TABLE
Problem: You need to create a unique list of customers from a large
list.
Strategy: Build a Pivot Table report with Customer in the Row area of
the layout. Because the Pivot Table creates a summary report, the ﬁrst
column of the table will include the unique list of customers.
From the Data menu, select Pivot Table and Pivot Chart report. Choose
Next in Step 1 and Step 2. In Step 3, choose Layout and drag the cus-
tomer ﬁeld to the Row area, as shown in Fig. 908.

Part
III

Fig. 908


You don’t want a field in the Data area, but Excel will not let you out of
the wizard without selecting something for the Data field. From the field
list on the right, drag a second copy of the Customer field to the Data
area, as shown in Fig. 909. This will give you a count of how many times
each customer appears. While you don’t need a count, remember you are
just making Excel happy so it will give you the list of customers.

Fig. 909

You will get a unique list of customers in the first column of the pivot ta-
ble. You can copy these and Paste – Special Values to a blank section of
the worksheet, as shown in Fig. 910.
Summary: Of all the methods of get-
ting a unique list of customers, this
use of the pivot table is the fastest
way to get the list.
Commands Discussed: PivotTable

Fig. 910


CREATE A PIVOT TABLE WITH FEWER CLICKS
Problem: Even though pivot tables are the fastest way to summarize
data, you are looking for an even faster way to create pivot tables.
Strategy: This method is only available in Excel 2000 and newer ver-
sions. Follow these steps.
1) Select a single cell in the original data, as shown in Fig. 911.

Fig. 911
Part
2) From the menu, select Data – PivotTable. Click Finish, as shown in III
Fig. 912.

Fig. 912


You are given a blank pivot table on a new sheet, as shown in Fig. 913.

Fig. 913

3) Drag ﬁelds from the ﬁeld list to the table, as shown in Fig. 914.

Fig. 914

Summary: This visual method for creating a pivot table is faster and
more intuitive.


CREATE A REPORT SHOWING COUNT,
MIN, MAX, AVERAGE, ETC.
Problem: All of the Pivot Table examples shown thus far are for sum-
ming revenue. What if you need to find out the average sale by customer
or the smallest sale?
Strategy: Pivot tables offer a variety of calculation options. Double-click
the Sum of Revenue button to change the calculation from Sum to any
other calculation, as shown in Fig. 915.

Part
III

Fig. 915

Additional Information: There is no built-in way to create a median
for a pivot table. I’ve heard this question a few times. If you absolutely
need to create a median in a pivot table, contact MrExcel Consulting
– we’ve custom written pivot-table-like reports that do medians.
Summary: Pivot tables can create averages; find the smallest sale,
largest sale, and the number of sales. Use the Summarize By field in the
PivotTable Field dialog.


USE MULTIPLE DATA FIELDS
AS A COLUMN FIELD
Problem: When you create a table with two or more Data fields, Excel
will default to having the various Data fields be like the innermost Row
field, as shown in Fig. 916. This is not the most useful view of the data.
It would be preferable to have the three data columns going across the
columns for each product.

Fig. 916

Strategy: When you have more than one field in the Data area, you will
find that a new button appears on the pivot table that is called Data, as
shown in Fig. 917. You can drag the Data button from the Row field to
the Column field.


Fig. 917

Summary: Although the default view of the pivot report for multiple
Data fields is unusual, you can easily correct it by moving the Data field
to the Column area.
Commands Discussed: Data – PivotTable

Part
III
COMPARE FOUR WAYS
TO SHOW TWO DATA FIELDS IN A PIVOT TABLE
Problem: When you create a pivot table with two fields and two Data
fields, Excel uses this very ugly default view of the data, as shown in
Fig. 918.

Fig. 918


Strategy: There is really no good strategy to deal with this problem.
Excel offers four ways to view this report and none of them is entirely
acceptable.
As shown in Fig. 919, in the second view, the Data field is dragged to
be the first Column field. I don’t like the fact that they show revenue
in columns B through D, but then you have to scroll all the way over to
column K for the total revenue.

Note: The numbers below are reformatted to make the columns narrower so
the entire report can fit in this page.

Fig. 919

In the third view, the Data field is dragged to be the second Column
field, as shown in Fig. 920. This view keeps all of East together, then all
of Central, then all of West.

Fig. 920

For the final view, drag the Data field to be the outermost Row field, as
shown in Fig. 921. This view is pretty good, although it would be prefer-
able to have the total Sum of Revenue appear after row 7 instead of all
the way at the end.


Part
Fig. 921 III

Summary: When you have two ﬁelds and two data types in a pivot
table, there are four possible options for displaying the data. None of the
options is perfect. It might be easier to create the report without totals
and add them yourself after changing to values.
Commands Discussed: Data – PivotTable


GROUP DAILY DATES UP BY MONTH
IN A PIVOT TABLE
Problem: Your dataset has a date on which each item was shipped.
When you produce a pivot table with that ﬁeld, it provides sales by day,
as shown in Fig. 922. The plant manager loves sales by day, but every-
one else in the company would rather see sales by month.

Fig. 922

Strategy: You can group daily
dates to show year, quarter,
and month. Build a pivot table
with dates in the Row area of
the pivot table.
1) Right-click the Date
heading. From the pop-
up menu, choose Group
and Show Detail and
then Group, as shown in
Fig. 923.

Fig. 923


2) The Grouping dialog defaults
to select Months. If your
data spans more than one
year, it is crucial that you
also select years. For this ex-
ample, select Months, Quar-
ters, and Years, as shown in
Fig. 924.

Result: The Date ﬁeld is now re-
placed with Months. There are
two new ﬁelds in the PivotTa-
ble Field List – one for Quarters
and one for Years, as shown in
Fig. 925.
Fig. 924
Part
III

Fig. 925

Gotcha: If you fail to include Years in the grouping, data from both Jan
2004 and Jan 2005 will be reported as “Jan”. Unless you are doing a
seasonality analysis, this is rarely what you need.
Summary: The Group feature is excellent for turning a daily report into
a monthly or quarterly report.
Commands Discussed: PivotTable – Group and Show Detail – Group


GROUP BY WEEK IN A PIVOT TABLE
Problem: In the last example you noticed that the Grouping dialog al-
lows you to group by second, minute, hour, day, month, quarter, and
year. You need to group by week.
Strategy: There is a grouping option that will group by week. However,
in order to set this up correctly, you will have to grab a calendar.
The dataset has data going back to January 1, 2004. Look on a calendar
to determine that this date fell on a Thursday.
1) If you want your week to report from Monday through Sunday,
then jot down that the week should start on December 29, 2003, as
shown in Fig. 926.

Fig. 926

2) Create a pivot table with dates in the Row area. Right-click the
date, choose Group and Show Detail and then Group.
3) In the Grouping dialog, Excel defaults to showing the entire range
of dates of the dataset. If you left the Starting at: ﬁeld unchanged,
as shown in Fig. 927, your weeks would all start on Thursday. As
shown in Fig. 928, change the 1/1/2004 date to 12/29/2003 to have
your weeks start on Monday.


Fig. 927 Part
III
4) Unselect the Months selection by choosing it with the mouse. Select
the Days choice. This will ungray the Number of Days: ﬁeld at the
bottom of the dialog. Use the spin button to move up to 7 days. See
Fig. 928.

Fig. 928


Result: The report is redrawn as a weekly report, as shown in
Fig. 929.

Fig. 929

Additional Details: Excel does not add a “Week” field to the PivotTa-
ble Field List. Instead, the field formerly containing dates now contains
weeks, but is still called Date.
Gotcha: Once you group by weeks, you can no longer group by month,
quarter, year, or any other selection.
Summary: It is possible to group daily dates up to weeks by using the
Number of Days field in the Grouping dialog.
Commands Discussed: Data – PivotTable – Group and Show Detail

PRODUCE AN ORDER LEAD-TIME REPORT
Problem: You work in a manufacturing plant, scheduling orders and
material. You always appreciate it when the sales force gets orders a
few months in advance so that you have enough time to get material into
the plant without having to pay exorbitant prices on the gray market.
Your dataset has both an Order Date and a Ship Date, as shown in Fig.
930. You want to analyze what percentage of the revenue comes in two
months before the order has to ship.


Fig. 930

Strategy: You would like to build a pivot table report with OrdDate in
the Column area, ShipDate in the Row area, and Revenue in the Data
area. However, both of the date ﬁelds have more than 255 points, so you
cannot initially produce a report with dates going across the columns.
Part
1) Initially, drag the OrdDate ﬁeld to the Row area, as shown in III
Fig. 931.

Fig. 931


2) Right-click OrdDate. Choose Group and Show Detail – Group.
Choose to Group by Months and Years, as shown in Fig. 932.

Fig. 932

3) Now that the OrdDate ﬁeld contains only 16 data points, you can
drag Years and OrdDate to the Column area as shown in Fig. 933.

Fig. 933

4) Next, drag the ShipDate ﬁeld to the Row area, as shown in
Fig. 934.


Fig. 934

5) Right-click ShipDate. Choose Group and Show Detail and then
Group. Group by Months and Years, as shown in Fig. 935.

Part
III

Fig. 935

It is interesting that the OrdDate fields get a
name of “Years”. When you group the Ship-
Date field, the second field is called “Years2”,
as shown in Fig. 936. There is really nothing
in the PivotTable Field List to help you re-
member which Year goes with which date.
It might help to write a note in the work-
sheet to help you remember that you grouped
ShipDate second and that the Years2 field
is associated with ShipDate instead of Ord-
Date.

Fig. 936


6) Drag Revenue to the report, as shown in Fig. 937.

Fig. 937

In Fig. 937, Cell G6 is an interesting number. It says that $60,368 of
the orders that shipped in January was also ordered in January. Your
manufacturing plant has to keep a lot of excess inventory on hand to be
able to react to orders that come in this late. Cell F6 shows that $92K of
orders for January was placed in December. This is still probably inside
the cumulative lead-time for most products.
Additional Information:
Double-click the Sum of Reve-
nue button to display the Pivot-
Table Field dialog. As shown in
Fig. 938, choose the Options>>
button to unhide a powerful
feature of Pivot Tables: Show
Data As.
1) By default, the Data ﬁelds
are shown as “Normal”.
This means that Excel re-
ports actual total revenue
numbers in the report.
There are many options
available in the Show
Data as: dropdown.

Fig. 938


2) In this case, choose Percentage (%) of Row, as shown in Fig. 939.

Fig. 939

3) Before closing the PivotTable Field dialog, choose the button for
Number…, as shown in Fig. 940.

Part
III

Fig. 940

4) Choose Percentage with one decimal place, as shown in Fig. 941.
Choose OK to close the Format Cells dialog, then OK to close the
PivotTable Field dialog.

Fig. 941


Result: The pivot table shows that 11.4 percent of January 2004 ship-
ments were ordered in January. See Fig. 942.

Fig. 942

Summary: This report required several techniques. Two different Date
ﬁelds were grouped by month and year. You also had to double-click the
Sum of Revenue ﬁeld to set the number format and to change the report-
ing from Normal to Percentage of Row. This type of report will be very
useful to all schedulers in manufacturing plants.
Commands Discussed: Data – PivotTable – Show Data As; Data – Piv-
otTable – Group and Show Detail

USE AUTOFORMAT WITH PIVOT TABLES
Problem: Due to the dynamic nature of pivot tables, it is fairly hard to
format them. As shown in Fig. 943, you might want to format the head-
ings in D4:F4
with a particu-
lar format be-
cause they are
column head-
ings. However,
when you spin
the pivot table to
another shape,
the formats will
be lost.

Fig. 943


Strategy: Use one of the 22 built-in AutoFormats for pivot tables. Even
if you don’t normally use AutoFormat in regular Excel, you should con-
sider it in pivot tables.
1) Use the Format Report button on the PivotTable toolbar, as shown
in Fig. 944.

Fig. 944

The AutoFormat dialog box initially shows six different report layouts.
The examples show the formatting on a report with four ﬁelds in the
Column area. As shown in Fig. 945, in Report 1, they are showing you
that the innermost level (Zone) would have a normal black font on white.
The next level (Area) would have a black font on a gray background. The Part
outermost level (Qtr) would have a bold font. III

Fig. 945


2) As shown in Fig. 946, use the scroll bar to see the formats for Re-
port 7 through Report 10 and Tables 1 through Table 2.

Fig. 946


Fig. 947 shows Table 3 through Table 8.

Part
III

Fig. 947


The last few options are Table 9, Table 10, PivotTable Classic, and None,

Fig. 948

3) Choose one of
the formats and
select OK.
Result: You can
quickly apply a new
look to the data. Fig.
949 shows Report 6.

Fig. 949


If you don’t like one look, choose the Format Report icon again and select
a different look. Fig. 950 shows Table 7.

Fig. 950
Part
Even with these formats, you can still pivot the report as usual. Here, III
as shown in Fig. 951, the Product ﬁeld moves up to the Column area,
Region is removed, and Customer is added to the Row area.

Fig. 951


Summary: For years, I used pivot tables because of their ability to
quickly produce summary reports. In recent versions of Excel, Microsoft
has improved the pivot table by offering great looking ways to format
the summary reports.
Commands Discussed: PivotTable – Format Report

SPECIFY A NUMBER FORMAT
FOR A PIVOTTABLE FIELD
Problem: In a pivot table, a Data ﬁeld will tend to inherit the numeric
formatting assigned to the data in the original dataset. This may not
always be correct. At a detail level, it might be appropriate to see invoice
amounts in dollars and cents, as shown in Fig. 952. However, at a sum-
mary level, you might prefer to show numbers in thousands.

Fig. 952

Strategy:
1) Assign a numeric format to the pivot ﬁeld. Double-click the Sum of
Revenue button to display the PivotTable Field dialog.
2) Choose the Number… button, as shown in Fig. 953. Choosing the
Number… button will bring up an abbreviated version of the For-
mat Cells dialog with only the Number tab.


Fig. 953
Part
3) Choose an appropriate numeric format and select OK, as shown in III
Fig. 954.

Fig. 954


Result: As shown in Fig. 955, the Revenue field will now always show
the selected format, no matter how the pivot table is changed.

Fig. 955

Gotcha: One of the conventions in formatting says that you should in-
clude a currency symbol on only the first and total rows of a dataset.
There is not a good way to do this with a pivot table. Use the numeric
formatting attached to the Product button to assign a currency format.
Then, select the first row of cells and assign a new format using Ctrl+1
to display the Format Cells dialog, as shown in Fig. 956.

Fig. 956


This will work initially, as shown in Fig. 957.

Fig. 957

If you later resequence the pivot table, such as sorting by revenue, the
special formatting will move into the pivot table instead of staying with
the ﬁrst row, as shown in Fig. 958.
Part
III

Fig. 958

Summary: You can control numeric formatting in a pivot table by using
the PivotTable Field dialog.
Commands Discussed: PivotTable – Pivot Field – Number


SUPPRESS TOTALS IN A PIVOT TABLE
Problem: Pivot tables are sometimes used just as an intermediate step
in order to reach another result. If you are going to be copying the data
to a new workbook that will be used as a new dataset, then all of the
totals by month, region, and year will tend to get in the way, as shown
in Fig. 959.

Fig. 959

Strategy: You can turn off subtotals for any ﬁeld.
1) Double-click the Date ﬁeld. Change the Subtotals setting from Au-
tomatic to None, as shown in Fig. 960.


Fig. 960
Part
2) Double-click the Region ﬁeld. Change the Subtotals from Automat-
III
ic to None, as shown in Fig. 961.

Fig. 961


Result: As shown in Fig. 962, every row in the pivot table is now a data
point. If you copy and paste this table to a new workbook, you will not
have to manually delete all the total rows.

Fig. 962

Summary: When you have more than one Row ﬁeld, you can remove
the automatic subtotals on the outer ﬁelds in order to produce a cleaner
looking report.
Commands Discussed: Data – PivotTables – Subtotals


ELIMINATE BLANKS IN THE
OUTLINE FORMAT OF A PIVOT TABLE
Problem: You have cre-
ated a pivot table report
and want to use this data
as a database in another
workbook. The pivot table
report always uses this
outline format. It may
look great, but it is not
conducive to data analy-
sis. As shown in Fig. 963,
you really need the Jan
heading to be copied to
A6:A13, and the East la- Part
bel to be in B6 and B7. III

Fig. 963

Strategy: To ﬁll in the blank
cells in the outline of the pivot
table, you must make a values-
only copy of the pivot table. In-
sert a new worksheet. Copy A4:
D111 from the pivot table. On
the new sheet, use Edit – Paste
Special – Values in order to
convert the pivot table to static
values, as shown in Fig. 964.

Fig. 964


In this case, you need to ﬁll in the blank cells in columns A and B with
the value from the cell above. Follow these steps.
1) Select cells A3:B108, as shown in Fig. 965.

Fig. 965

2) Press the F5 key to display the Go To dialog. In the lower left cor-
ner, choose the Special… button, as shown in Fig. 966.

Fig. 966


3) On the Go To Special dialog, choose Blanks from the ﬁrst column
and then choose OK, as shown in Fig. 967.

Part
III

Fig. 967

4) This next part is confusing, but it works. Type an Equal sign. Hit
the Up Arrow, as shown in Fig. 968.

Fig. 968


5) Press Ctrl+Enter, and you get the result shown in Fig. 969.

Fig. 969

Here is why this works. When you hit the Equal sign, you are telling
Excel that you are entering a formula. Hit the Up Arrow, and Excel will
make the formula be the cell above the current cell. Hit Ctrl+Enter and
Excel will enter a similar (relative) formula in all of the cells of the selec-
tion. It really doesn’t matter which cell is the active cell, provided you
have successfully selected all of the blank cells ﬁrst.
6) The next step is to convert all of those new formulas to values. You
are tempted to use Ctrl+C and Edit – Paste Special – Values right
now, but the Copy command cannot be used on multiple selections,

Fig. 970


7) Reselect A3:B108. Ctrl+C to copy. Edit – Paste Special Values to
convert the formulas to values.
Result: You have a nice solid block of data with value in all of the rows
for Region and Date, as shown in Fig. 971. This data is now suitable for
sorting and ﬁltering.

Part
III

Fig. 971

Summary: The steps above seem very convoluted. However, they can
easily be mastered and carried out in less than a minute. They are the
key to taking the results of a pivot table and creating a useful block of
data for further analysis.
Commands Discussed: Edit – Copy; Go To Special – Blanks;
Ctrl+Enter


USE A PIVOT TABLE TO COMPARE TWO LISTS
Problem: You have last week’s report of forecasted orders. You receive
a new forecast report. As shown in Fig. 972, you need to determine which
forecasts are new, which forecasts were changed, and which forecasts
were deleted.

Fig. 972

Strategy: Copy the two lists into a single list, with a third column to
indicate whether the forecast is from this week or last week. Create a
pivot table and the new/deleted/changed forecasts will be readily appar-
ent. Follow these steps.
1) Add a heading in C3 called Source. Assign the value of “Last Week”
in C4:C19, as shown in Fig. 973.


Part
III
Fig. 973

2) Copy the data from col-
umns E and F to A20. In
C20:C37, enter the value
of This Week, as shown in
Fig. 974.

Fig. 974


3) Create a Pivot Table. Put Customer in the Row area, Source in the
Column area, and Forecast in the Data area.
4) In the PivotTable Options, turn off Grand Total for Rows. As shown
in Fig. 975, you will have a comparison of the two lists.

Fig. 975

Results: For any cells without an entry in Last Week, the forecast is
new. For any forecast without an entry in column C, the forecast was
deleted. For any forecast where columns B and C do not match, the fore-
cast was changed.


Gotcha: It would be nice to add a formula in column D that shows the
difference between Last Week and This Week. However, if you use the
method of highlighting a cell in the pivot table with the mouse or arrow
keys while you enter the formula, Excel automatically changes the B5
reference to a GetPivotData function. Instead of getting a simple for-
mula like =C5–B5, you get a complicated formula with GetPivotData
formulas, as shown in Fig. 976.

Part
Fig. 976 III

As you copy this formula from D5 to D6, it does not have a relative refer-
ence. As shown in Fig. 977, the results will be wrong in the rest of the
rows.

Fig. 977


You have two options in order to enter a regular formula outside of the
pivot table.
First option: You can actually type =D5–C5 as the formula.
Second option: Alternatively, you can add a button to a toolbar to per-
manently turn off the automatic creation of GetPivotData functions.
From the menu, select Tools – Customize. Choose the Commands tab.
In the Category dropdown, choose Data. Scroll all the way to the bottom
of the Commands list. There is an icon for Generate GetPivotData. Drag
this icon from the Customize dialog and drop it on one of the toolbars, as
shown in Fig. 978.

Fig. 978

You can now turn off the creation of GetPivotData functions automati-
cally by selecting the item in the toolbar, as shown in Fig. 979.


Fig. 979

Summary: In addition to using VLOOKUP or Data Consolidation, you
can use pivot tables as a quick way of comparing two or more lists. The
trick is to add a new temporary column identifying the source of each
record and then to use the Source column as a Column ﬁeld.
Commands Discussed: Data – PivotTable; Generate GetPivotData

CALCULATED FIELDS IN A PIVOT TABLE
Problem: You need to include a calculation in the pivot table that is not Part
in your underlying data. Your data includes Quantity Sold, Revenue, III
and Cost, as shown in Fig. 980. You would like to report Gross Proﬁt and
Average Price.

Fig. 980


Strategy: You can add a calculated field to a pivot table. Follow these
steps.
1) Build a pivot table.
2) From the PivotTable toolbar, select PivotTable – Formula – Calcu-
lated Field, as shown in Fig. 981.

Fig. 981

3) Type a name
for the field,
in this case,
Profit. Enter
the calculation
=Revenue–
COGS. Choose
the Add but-
ton, as shown
in Fig. 982.

Fig. 982


4) Here is the formula for Gross Profit Percent. See Fig. 983.

Fig. 983

5) The formula for Average Price is shown in Fig. 984.

Part
III
Fig. 984

The resulting pivot table includes all of the fields, as shown in Fig. 985.

Fig. 985

Gotcha: The label Sum of GPPct is somewhat misleading, as is Sum of
Average Price. In reality, Excel finds the sum of Revenue, finds the sum
of Quantity, and then divides the values on the total line in order to get
the average price. This makes calculated fields fine for any calculations
that follow the Associative law of mathematics. If you actually wanted
to have Excel do all of the individual average prices and then sum them
up, it would be impossible in a pivot table.
Summary: Calculated Fields add a new measure that can be reported
in the Data area of a PivotTable for all Measures.
Commands Discussed: PivotTable – Formula – Calculated Field


ADD A CALCULATED ITEM
TO GROUP ITEMS IN A PIVOT TABLE
Problem: The calculated Pivot Item is a strange concept in Excel. It is
one of the least useful items. You should use extreme caution when try-
ing to use a calculated pivot item. Consider the following small dataset

Fig. 986

Your company has three product lines. The Hartville division manu-
factures ABC and DEF. The Norwalk division manufactures XYZ. As
shown in Fig. 987, you have a pivot table showing sales by product. Re-
member that the total of items sold is 127.

Fig. 987


Strategy: You’ve read that you can add a calculated item along the
Product division to total ABC and DEF in order to get a total for the
Hartville plant.
From the PivotTable toolbar, you select PivotTable – Formula – Calcu-
lated Item, as shown in Fig. 988.

Part
III

Fig. 988

In the Insert Calculated Item dialog, you deﬁne an item called Hartville,
which is the total of ABC + DEF, as shown in Fig. 989.

Fig. 989


However, when you view the resulting pivot table, the total is now wrong.
Instead of having 127 items sold, the pivot table reports that the total is
158, as shown in Fig. 990.

Fig. 990

The items made in Hartville are in the list twice, once as “ABC” and
once in “Hartville”. This is useless.
As shown in Fig. 991, you could use the Product dropdown and uncheck
the ABC and DEF items.

Fig. 991


The resulting pivot table shows the correct total of 127, as shown in
Fig. 992.

Fig. 992

Additional Details: I cannot think of a single example where a Calcu-
lated Item would actually be useful. Part
Instead of trying to use a Calculated Item, add a Plant column to the III
original data. You can now produce a report that shows both the plant
location and the products made at the plant and the total of 127 will be
correct, as shown in Fig. 993.

Fig. 993

Summary: Calculated Pivot Items sound like they should be useful, but
they are not.
Commands Discussed: Pivot Table – Formulas – Calculated Item


QUICKLY CREATE CHARTS FOR ANY REGION
Problem: You need to create similar charts for each sales region from
the transactional data shown in Fig. 994.

Fig. 994

Strategy: There have been many pivot table examples in the book. It is
also possible to make a chart that relies on a pivot table.
1) Select a single cell in your data and choose Data – PivotTable and
PivotChart. In Step 1 of the Wizard, change the last option button
to create a pivot chart, as shown in Fig. 995. Hit Next.

Fig. 995


2) Conﬁrm the data range in Step 2. Choose Next, as shown in
Fig. 996.

Fig. 996

3) In Step 3, choose Finish, as shown in Fig. 997.

Part
III

Fig. 997


You will be presented with a blank pivot chart, as shown in Fig. 998.

Fig. 998

4) Drag the Revenue ﬁeld from the Field list and drop it in the main
part of the chart, as shown in Fig. 999.

Fig. 999


5) Drag the Date ﬁeld and drop it in the Category Fields area, as
shown in Fig. 1000.

Part
III
Fig. 1000

6) Drag the Product ﬁeld and drop it in the blue box near the legend
on the right side of the chart, as shown in Fig. 1001.

Fig. 1001


7) Drag the Region ﬁeld and drop it in the Page Fields area.
Result: As shown in Fig. 1002, you can change the Region ﬁeld to quick-
ly produce a chart for each region.

Fig. 1002

Summary: You can use a pivot chart to create charts for several differ-
ent regions.
Commands Discussed: Data – PivotChart

USE QUERY TO GET
A UNIQUE SET OF RECORDS
Problem: You’ve seen many different ways to get a unique list of
customers from a dataset in Excel. You are sitting back right now, think-
ing, couldn’t Bill Jelen offer just one more way to get a unique list of
customers?

7917631 excel-pivot-tables-in-excel-2003

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