If you love the new PowerPivot add-in for Excel 2010, you can enter the latest contest on the PowerPivotPro blog. Show off your efficient PowerPivot techniques, and win one of the two top prizes -- a 1 year MSDN subscription.

Send in your sample workbooks, with charts and slicers and cross-filtering enabled. Impress Rob with your PowerPivot skills, and you might win one of the top prizes, or a PowerPivot poster.

Here's how Rob will decide the winner:

Entries will be judged on, in roughly descending order:

1. Performance – I will compare query speed with slicer cross-filtering turned on vs. turned off.  Smaller differences are better for this contest.
2. Polish – as I slice the report, do the charts all still look nice?  Ex:  Blank space in charts = not good.
3. Ease – how hard is it to execute your technique?  We will turn winning entries into blog posts, and this will become a new reference technique here at PowerPivotPro.
4. Originality – this never hurts but is not crucial.  Fun is good.  Unexpected benefits and features are even better.

I don't see a closing date for the contest, so you'd better get started soon, and send in your entry ASAP.

Update: Contest closes Sunday October 3rd, 11:59 PM US Pacific time

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If you rearrange the fields in a pivot chart layout, the related pivot table changes too. Unfortunately, there's no setting you can change if you want the pivot chart and pivot table to work independently.

As a workaround, you can create a second pivot table, based on the first one, and arrange it as you’d like. Then, when you change the pivot chart, only the original pivot table is affected. You can hide the first pivot table that’s connected to the pivot chart and use the second pivot table as for printing reports.

If you require several charts based on the same pivot table, but with different layouts, create multiple pivot tables based on the original pivot table. Create one pivot chart from each of the secondary pivot tables, and rearranging one pivot chart won’t affect the others.

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When you create a pivot chart, the series order is automatically applied. In this example, the product categories had been manually sorted in the pivot table. In the pivot chart legend, the products are in the same order: Crackers, Snacks, Bars and Cookies.

In a longer list of items, you might like the series sorted alphabetically, so they’re easier to find in the list.

Change the Sort Order

To change the sort order, follow these steps:

1. Select the pivot chart
2. If the PivotChart Filter pane isn’t visible, click the Analyze tab on the Ribbon, then click PivotChart Filter.

   

3. In the PivotChart Filter pane, click the arrow in the drop-down list for the field you want to sort. In this example,
       click the arrow for the Legend Fields (series), where the Category field is listed.

   

4. Click Sort A-Z, to sort the categories in ascending order

Pivot Table Series Order

NOTE: Changing the series order in the Pivot Chart will also affect the Pivot Table on which it is based.

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For more information on Pivot Tables, please see the Pivot Table Tutorials on the Contextures Website.

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After you create a column chart from a pivot table, you might want to change it so the chart is a combination chart type. You’d like most of the series to remain as columns, and one of the series to be a line.

In Excel 2007 there are no Combination Chart types that you can choose, as there were in the Excel 2003 Chart Wizard. However, in any version of Excel you can create your own combination charts.

In this example, the chart is a Clustered Column chart type, with the series showing the sales of each category in each city.

You’d like to change the Cookies series to a line, so it stands out from the other categories.

In the pivot chart, right-click on one of the Cookies columns.

In the shortcut menu that appears, click Change Series Chart Type

In the Change Chart Type dialog box, click the Line chart type, and click one of the Line subtypes, then click OK.

The chart is now a combination chart, with columns for Bars, Crackers and Snacks, and a line for Cookies.

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

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If your pivot table is based on an Excel list, and you probably add records to the existing source data table. You'd like the source data range to automatically expand to include any new rows and columns. You don't want to manually change the pivot table range every time you add new data.

Create a Dynamic Range

If you frequently add new data to the pivot table source data, you can use a dynamic range, which will automatically expand to include the new rows and columns. Follow these steps to create a dynamic range:

1. Select the top-left cell in the source table. This step isn’t necessary, but helps you by inserting the cell reference in the name definition.
2. Choose Insert | Name | Define.
3. In the Names in workbook box, type a name for the dynamic range, for example, PivotData.
4. In the Refers to box, type an OFFSET formula that refers to the selected cell. For example, with cell A1 selected on a worksheet named Pivot, you’d type (all on one line)
   =OFFSET(Pivot!$A$1,0,0,
   COUNTA(Pivot!$A:$A),
   COUNTA(Pivot!$1:$1))
5. Click the OK button.

Change the Pivot Table Source

Then, change the pivot table’s source to the dynamic range that you created:

1. Right-click a cell in the pivot table.
2. On the shortcut menu, click PivotTable Wizard.
3. Click the Back button.
4. In the Range box, type the name of the dynamic range, and click Finish.

Note

This technique will not work if there are other items in row 1 or column A of the Pivot worksheet. Those items would be included in the count, and would falsely increase the size of the source range.

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.

In Excel 2003, if you select a cell in the pivot table and click the Chart Wizard button on the Standard toolbar, a default pivot chart on a chart sheet is created. In some cases you might prefer to step through the Chart Wizard so you can set the options as you create the pivot chart.

Create a Pivot Chart with the Chart Wizard

1. Select an empty cell away from the pivot table and any other data on the worksheet.
2. On the Standard toolbar, click the Chart Wizard button.
3. In Step 1 of the Chart Wizard, select a Chart type and Chart sub-type, then click Next.
4. In Step 2 of the Chart Wizard, click in the Data range box, then select any cell in the pivot table. The entire pivot table will be automatically selected, and its address will appear in the Data range box.
5. Continue through the Chart Wizard steps, selecting the options you want, then click Finish to create the pivot chart.

Note: After selecting a pivot table as the data range, you can’t return to Step 2 of the Chart Wizard. To use a different data range, create a new chart.

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