It’s interesting to see what people are saying about Excel in Twitter, and I post a few favourite Excel tweets, from my daily reading.

Of course, many of those tweets are about pivot tables, so here, for your Friday entertainment, are some highlights from the past.

Do any of these pivot table tweets sound like you could have posted them?

• Pivot tables are my favourite part of excel. I'm actually sad enough to have a favourite part.
• Just discovered the "Show Pages" function in Excel Pivot tables... my world may never be the same again. #dork
• Pivot tables were originally implemented by Lotus Improv (which was all it did). Yours, the spreadsheet bore
• If there was an Olympics for Excel Pivot tables, I would have just done the equivalent of the Double McTwist.
• You are not the boss of me, Pivot Table. Sorry, I mean Mister Pivot Table.
• A Pivot Table cannot overlap another Pivot Table - why is this my problem Microsoft?
• Careful lying about Excel. I got caught in that once. They gave me a test. Stupid pivot tables.
• Is it me or does excel rarely assume the correct function when i drop data into a pivot table?
• that's right ladies, i may not be able to build you a spice rack, but i can sure as hell make you a pivot table. that's hot, right?
• Also, if you don't know how to use pivot tables, you don't *really* know how to use Excel. There, I said it.
• OH:"I'm going to write a book about Excel pivot tables. It's going to be a romance novel."
• I refuse to help anyone with any system or data unless they know what a excel pivot table is
• I work with technology every day. Excel pivot tables still baffle me.

Have a great weekend, and may all of your pivot table tweets be happy ones!

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In a pivot table, you can apply a manual filter to a pivot field, by using the check boxes in the field’s drop down list.

In this example, there is a date field in the Row Labels area and a few dates have been selected in the manual filter.

Updating the Pivot Table Data

If you add new records in the pivot table’s source data, new dates might be added. When you update the pivot table, the new dates might appear, even if you hadn’t selected those dates in the manual filter.

Seeing the new dates could be helpful, if you want to make sure that you notice new records when they’re added. You can manually deselect the new items after they appear.

However, if you want to prevent the new dates from automatically appearing, you can change a setting in the pivot field, to specify if new items are included or not, when the field is manually filtered.

Change the Pivot Field Setting

To change the setting, and prevent new items from being included, follow these steps:

1. In the pivot table, right-click a cell in the date field, and click Field Settings.
2. On the Subtotals & Filters tab, in the Filter section, remove the check mark from Include New Items In Manual Filter
3. Click OK.

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When you have a long list of fields in an Excel 2003 pivot table, it can take a long time to drag them into the pivot table layout, using the PivotTable Wizard.

For a quicker way to add the fields, don't go into the Layout screen in Step 3 -- just click the Finish button.

Add Fields from the PivotTable Field List

When the PivotTable Wizard closes, you'll see a blank pivot table on the worksheet.

Note: If the PivotTable Field List isn't visible, click the Show Field List button on the PivotTable Toolbar.

To add the pivot fields:

1. Then, in the Field List, select one of the layout areas from the drop down list.
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2. In the Field List, double-click on each field that you want to add to the selected layout area.
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Repeat Steps 1 and 2, for all the layout areas, leaving the Data Area to fill in last.

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If you need to sum specific items in a pivot table field, you can create a calculated item. For example, if your pivot table contains an Order Status field, with four types of status:

• Shipped
• Pending
• Backorder
• Canceled

You could create a calculated item, named Sold, that sums the units sold, for orders with a status of Shipped, Pending, or Backorder.

Create a Calculated Item

Follow these steps to create a calculated item:

1. In the pivot table, select a cell that contains an Order Status item. For example, select cell A5, that contains the Backorder item. 

   

2. On the Ribbon’s Options tab, in the Tools group, click Formulas, and then click Calculated Item.
3. Type a name for the Calculated Item, for example, Sold, and then press the Tab key to move to the Formula box.
4. In the Fields list, select Order Status, and in the Items list, double-click Shipped, and then type a plus sign (+).
5. Double-click Pending, type a plus sign, and then double-click Backorder. The complete formula is =Shipped+Pending+Backorder.
6. Click OK, to save the calculated item, and to close the dialog box.

The new calculated item, Sold, is added to the Row area in the pivot table. However, the Grand Totals have increased, because the Sold item includes the values from other items.

Hide the Unnecessary Pivot Items

In the pivot table, you can hide the Shipped, Pending, and Backorder items, because they are included in the Sold calculated item.

With those pivot items hidden, the pivot table will show the correct Grand Totals.

Download the Sample File

To see the pivot table data and the calculated item, you can download the Calculated Item sample file. The file is in Excel 2007 format, and is zipped.

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One of the benefits of using an Excel pivot table to analyze your data, is that you can use filters to focus on a specific part of the summarized results. Hiding some of the data with filters can be misleading though, if you can't tell that filters have been applied.

If you apply a filter in Excel 2007 or Excel 2010, the filter drop down changes to a funnel, with a tiny arrow. In the screen shot below, the ItemSold field has been filtered, to hide some of the items.

In Excel 2003, and earlier versions, if you apply a filter to a pivot field, the drop down arrow doesn't change. The same filter was applied in Excel 2003, in the screenshot below, but both dropdown arrows are the same.

Create Your Own Filter Markers

If you'd like to make it easier to tell which fields are filtered, you can use the Excel VBA code created by Alex Jankowski, which displays a bright blue marker above each filtered field.

The instructions, sample code and Alex's downloadable workbook are on the Contextures blog, in the article:

 Add Filter Markers in Excel Pivot Table

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In some pivot tables, you might want to add comments to a few cells, to help the users understand what the results mean, or to explain the different pivot fields. However, if you add comments to a pivot table, you'll run into a couple of problems.

Tooltips Block the Comments

One problem with comments in a pivot table is that the contextual tooltips might appear when you to a pivot table cell that contains a comment. In the screen shot below, you can see the red comment marker, but the comment isn't visible.

If you decide to use comments, follow these steps, to turn off the tooltips feature.

1. Right-click a cell in the pivot table, and then click PivotTable options.
2. In the PivotTable Options dialog box, on the Display tab, remove the check mark from Show contextual tooltips and then click OK.

After you turn off this setting, the comment appears when you point to the cell.

Pivot Table Comments Don't Move

When you add comments to cells in the pivot table, the comments are attached to the Excel worksheet cell, rather than to the pivot item’s cell. If you change the pivot table layout, the comments won’t move with the item, and the comments could end up confusing the users instead of helping them.

In the screen shot below, a new field has been added to the row area. The comment was originally added to cell D10, that had a value of 91, for cracker sales in Seattle. Now the layout has changed, but the comment is still in cell D10. That cell now has a value of 198, and summarizes cracker sales at store 3074 in Detroit.

Alternative to Comments

Instead of inserting comments in the pivot table, you could add a column to the source data, and enter brief comments there. A user who has a question about the data in the pivot table could double-click on the cell, using the Show Details feature to extract the source data and read any notes entered.

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For a pivot table that’s based on a Microsoft Access query, you might need to find out which database and query were used as the source data.

In Excel, if you click the Change Data Source command, on the Ribbon's Options tab, you can see the connection name in the Change PivotTable Data Source dialog box. However, that bit of information isn't too useful -- it doesn't show you the name and path of the Access file, and you can't see which query was used to create the pivot table.

View the Connection Properties

To find the details on the source data's Access file and query, you can follow these steps:

• In the Excel file, select a cell in the pivot table
• On the Ribbon's Data tab, in the Connections group, click Properties.

• In the Connection Properties dialog box, click the Definition tab.
  • In the Connection File box, you can see the name and path of the database.
  • In the Command Text box is the name of the Access query.
• Click Cancel to close the Connection Properties dialog box.

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A powerful feature of pivot tables is that you can filter a pivot field, to see specific results. However, if you apply a different filter to that pivot field, the first filter is removed. For example, if you filter a Row field for region names starting with "East", and then add a Top 10 filter, the "East" filter is removed.

Use the technique shown in this video to apply multiple pivot table filters at the same time. You can use a Label filter, Value filter and Manual filter simultaneously, to fine tune your pivot table reports.

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In Excel 2010, you can use the free PowerPivot add-in to create a report from multiple Excel workbooks or worksheets. With PowerPivot, it's easy to connect the tables using the Primary and the Foreign key, such as 'ProductID' in a Sales table and a Pricing table.

In some cases though, you might want to combine the data in two Excel files, or worksheets, that have an identical structure. For example, you could have sales data for the different regions, or expense data for multiple years.

Because the tables have identical structures, you can't use a key to connect them; instead, you would need to create one combined table from all the data. The technique shown in the following video allows you to import more than a million records from Excel, despite the fact that one worksheet can only contain up to 1,048,576 rows.

Thanks to Excel MVP, Kirill Lapin, for sharing this very helpful tip. You can see more of Kirill's work in the Contextures Blog post on Combining Data from Two Excel Files in a Pivot Table.

Detailed Instruction and Sample Files

To see detailed instructions for this technique, with more screen shots, visit the PowerPivot from Identical Structure Excel Files page on the Contextures website. That page also has a link for downloading the East and West sales data that I used in this example.

Watch the PowerPivot Video

To see the steps for combining data from multiple tables in PowerPivot, please watch this PowerPivot from Identical Excel Files video tutorial.

Download the PowerPivot Add-In

You can download the free PowerPivot add-in from the Microsoft website: PowerPivot Download

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If you're working with pivot table calculated fields in Excel VBA programming, or trying to use the Orientation property for data fields, you might encounter some problems. Here's how I managed to work around an error that occurs when you try to remove a calculated field from the pivot table layout with Excel VBA.

Strange Results for Orientation Property

I encountered the first oddity with Orientation while working with pivot table field names. I wanted to see a bit of information about each pivot field, so I wrote some Excel VBA pivot field code, to show the caption, source name, location (orientation), position, sample data, and a formula (calculated fields).

The code worked well, but the Orientation property gave some strange results for the fields in the Values area. Instead of listing the field location as Data, they were shown as Hidden. At the top of the screen shot below, you can see the field names circled in the pivot table layout, but the list says they're hidden.

Removing the Data Fields

I experimented with the Orientation property in the code, but had no success in getting it to display correctly when looping through the PivotFields. When I tried to change the Orientation for the data fields, things got even stranger. I could change the regular data fields to xlHidden, to remove them from the pivot table layout, but those calculated fields weren't removed.

Instead of changing the calculated field Orientation to xlHidden, Excel displayed the error message "Run-time error '1004': Unable to set the Orientation property of the PivotField class"

On the Excel worksheet, you can manually uncheck the calculated field boxes, and remove them from the pivot table, then check the box again, to put it back into the layout. However, if you record a macro while removing the calculated field, that recorded code shows the same error message when you try to run it.

Remove the Calculated Fields

A Google search showed that many other people had encountered this problem, and the only solution was delete the calculated field, instead of trying to remove it from the layout. That approach is okay if you want to permanently remove the calculated field, but wouldn't be much help if you wanted to keep the calculated field in your pivot table, for use later.

So, I wrote the following code that deletes each calculated field, then immediately adds it back to the pivot table field list, but not into the pivot table layout. If you've had trouble removing calculated fields from the pivot table layout, please let me know if this code helps you.

Update: If multiple pivot tables share the same pivot cache, calculated field is removed from all. To prevent accidental deletion from other pivot tables, go to this article for sample code: Check for Shared Pivot Cache

Sub RemoveCalculatedFields()
Dim pt As PivotTable
Dim pf As PivotField
Dim pfNew As PivotField
Dim strSource As String
Dim strFormula As String

Set pt = ActiveSheet.PivotTables(1)
    For Each pf In pt.CalculatedFields
        strSource = pf.SourceName
        strFormula = pf.Formula
        pf.Delete
        Set pfNew = pt.CalculatedFields.Add(strSource, strFormula)
    Next pf

End Sub

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