In recent blog posts, we’ve looked at the pivot table Count function, the Average function, and the Min and Max functions. In this article we’ll look at the Product function.

Product Summary Function

The Product summary function shows the result of multiplying all the underlying values in the Values area. The result is the same as using the PRODUCT function on the worksheet to calculate the multiplied values.

In all the years that I've worked with pivot tables, I've never had to use the Product summary function, and can't imagine a situation where it would be useful. However, you can see how it works, and decide if it would be useful in any of your applications.

PRODUCT Worksheet Function

The PRODUCT worksheet function can be useful as a quick way to multiply several values in a worksheet row. For example, in this list of orders, the PRODUCT function multiplies the item quantity, times the cost, times the markup rate, to get the total price for each order.

In column G, you can see the total calculated by using the multiplier operator instead. The only case in which the results are different is where there is a blank cell, such as in row 4. The PRODUCT function treats the blank as a 1, and the multiplier operator treats the blank as a zero.

In this scenario, the PRODUCT worksheet function shows a meaningful result.

PRODUCT Worksheet Function for Columns

However, when you're using data  as the source for a pivot table, you aren't multiplying rows, as you would with the PRODUCT worksheet example above. The pivot table will summarize the data from several, or even thousands of rows, so the PRODUCT function isn't useful, in my experience.

In the screen shot below, you can see the pivot table source data, with the product calculated for each type of item that's sold, using the PRODUCT worksheet function. Instead of multiplying the values in rows, values in the same column (Qty) are being multiplied.

At the bottom of the source data is the overall PRODUCT calculation.

Unlike the previous example, these products are meaningless.

Pivot Table Product Summary Function

When you use the Product summary function in a pivot table that's based on the data source shown above, the results are the same meaningless numbers.

The results of the Product function may be very large numbers and default to a Scientific number format. You can format the numbers as Number format, instead of Scientific format.

Note: Excel only stores and calculates with 15 significant digits of precision, so after the 15th character you'll only see zeros.

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You can create custom PivotTable Styles in an Excel 2007 workbook, to fine tune the appearance of your pivot tables. If you’ve invested a lot of time in create a custom style, you might like to copy that style to a different workbook.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a built-in command that will let you copy PivotTable Styles from one workbook to another. However, you can follow a few simple steps to copy your styles to any workbook.

Copy a PivotTable Style

To copy a custom PivotTable style, you can temporarily copy a formatted pivot table to a different workbook. In this example, we’ll copy a custom PivotTable Style – MyMedium2 – from the MyOld.xlsx workbook to the MyNew.xlsx workbook.

1. In the MyOld.xlsx workbook, select a cell in the pivot table that has the custom style applied.
2. On the Ribbon’s Options tab, in the Actions group, click Select.
3. Click the Entire Pivot Table command.
4. On the Ribbon’s Home tab, click Copy.
5. Switch to the MyNew.xlsx workbook.
6. Select a blank worksheet, or insert a new blank worksheet.
7. Select cell A1 on the blank worksheet.
8. On the Ribbon’s Home tab, click Paste.
9. Delete the sheet that contains the pasted copy of the pivot table.

Your custom PivotTable style now appears in the PivotTable Styles gallery.

Select any pivot table in the workbook, and apply your custom PivotTable Style.

Watch the Video

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For more information on Pivot Tables, please visit Pivot Table Topics index on the Contextures Website.

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Changes being made to the relational warehouse and cube schema in Team Foundation Server 2010 will affect existing Excel pivot tables/charts that are authored against the warehouse or cube.

To learn more, you can read the article on Sunder Raman's Blog.

If there are blank cells in one of the fields in your source data, you might want to show a count of the blank cells in the pivot table. In this example there's a Region field in the source data, and some of the records have no region name entered. In the pivot table, you'd like to see a count of how many records are missing a region name.

To find the count, you might add the Region field to the pivot table’s row area, and put another copy of the Region field in the data area, as Count of Region.This seems logical, but there’s no count showing for the blank regions.

Count a Different Field

A pivot table can’t count the blank cells when you add a field to the data area and use the Count or CountNum summary function. That's why no count appears beside the (blank) region in the screen shot above.

Instead, put a different field in the data area, and use it for the count. For example, if the Units field will always contain data, add Count of Units to the data area, as shown below. The count of blank Regions is now calculated, and you can see that three records are missing a region name.

You might have to make changes to a workbook that contains a pivot table. If someone else created that workbook, you may not be sure where to find the Excel table that was used as the pivot table's source data. In some workbooks there can be several Excel tables, and it's not immediately obvious which table was used.

How To Locate the Source Data

To locate the source data, follow these steps:

1. Select any cell in the pivot table.

2. On the Ribbon, under the PivotTable Tools tab, click the Options tab.

3. In the Data group, click the top section of the Change Data Source command.

In the Change PivotTable Data Source dialog box, you can see the the source table or range in the Table/Range box. This may be a worksheet reference, such as

• Sales_North!$A$1:$O$500

or a table name, such as

• Sales_East

On the worksheet, behind the dialog box, you can see the source range, surrounded by a moving border.

4. Click OK, to close the dialog box.

Unhide a Sheet

Usually the source range will be visible, and surrounded by a moving border. If the source range isn't activated, it may be on a hidden worksheet. You can follow these steps to unhide a sheet:

1. On the Ribbon, click the Home tab

2. In the Cells group, click Format.

2. In the Visibility section, click Hide & Unhide, and then click the Unhide Sheet command.

3. In the list, select the sheet that you want to make visible, and click OK.

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For more information on pivot tables, see the Pivot Table Topics on my Contextures web site.

To prevent old items from being retained in an Excel 2007 pivot table, you can change an option setting, as shown in the short video below:

1. Right-click a cell in the pivot table
2. Click on PivotTable options
3. Click on the Data tab
4. In the Retain Items section, select None from the drop down list.
5. Click OK, then refresh the pivot table.

Details at www.contextures.com/xlPivot04.html

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For more information on pivot tables, see the Pivot Table Topics on my Contextures web site.

Usually, when you add a field to the Values area in a pivot table, it automatically uses the Sum function. Sometimes though, a field automatically uses the Count function. You might not understand why different functions are used for two fields that contain similar data.

• If there are blank cells, or non-numeric data in the field, the Count function is used as a default.
• For fields that contain all numeric data, the Sum function is the default.

You can’t set a default summary function in a pivot table. However, after the field has been added to the Values area, you can change its summary function:

1. Right-click a cell in the field that you want to change, and choose Field Settings.
2. In the Summarize by list, select one of the functions.
3. Click OK to close the PivotTable Field dialog box.

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For more information on pivot tables, see the Pivot Table Topics on my Contextures web site.