by contextures.com
Most pivot tables show numbers, so you can see a detailed summary of the source data. To add a visual element to the pivot table, add data bars that are similar to a bar chart. This works well in a simple pivot table, with only one or two columns of data.
Continue reading “Show Sales Amounts as Data Bars in Excel Pivot Table”
Usually, it’s easy to sort an Excel pivot table – just select one of the sort options – A to Z or Z to A – in the heading drop downs. However, you might run into a pivot table sorting problem, where the wrong item stays at the top. See why that happens, and how you can fix the pivot sort problem.
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This short video shows how to build an Excel pivot table that calculates a correct count, even if there are blank cells in the source data table.
After you add number fields to a pivot table’s Values area, you can format those numbers. To find out which number formats are used most often, I did a 3-question survey. Thanks to everyone who replied, and these charts show the results of that survey, compiled on two different dates.
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There are sample Excel files on my Contextures site, with data you can use for testing, or demos. The original sample file has sales data for a fictional office supply company. I’ve added more files recently, so see if they’ll be helpful to you too.
Continue reading “Excel Sample Data for Pivot Table Testing”
A simple data change can cause a strange pivot table refresh error, if you added the data to the Data Model. The long error message starts with, “We couldn’t get data from the Data Model. Here’s the error message we got”. It also mentions “function PCMinorObjectCollection”, which I’d never heard of before. See what causes this problem, and how to fix it.
Continue reading “Excel Data Model Pivot Table Refresh Error”
When you create a pivot table in Excel, it includes all the source data, even if some rows were hidden by filtering. However, if you’re using a version of Excel that has the new Spill (dynamic) functions, you can try this technique, to create a pivot table from filtered list visible rows only
Instead of manually updating all the pivot tables in your workbook, use a macro to do the job quickly. This macro tries to refresh all the pivot caches in the active workbook. If the macro can’t refresh a pivot cache, it will show you a message with the pivot cache index number, and the error description.
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Click a pivot table Slicer, to quickly show and hide groups of values. This value group slicer technique saves time and space, when there are lots of numeric fields in your source data table.
Usually, it’s best to set up your Excel file with one pivot table per sheet, so you don’t have to worry about them overlapping. However, if you need to see them side by side, here’s how you can create and filter two pivot tables on an Excel sheet, based on the same source data.
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