Microsoft Excel Pivot

Table Data Crunching

(Office 2021 and
Microsoft 365)

Bill Jelen

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 Microsoft Excel Pivot Table Data Crunching (Office 2021 And EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Microsoft 365) Brett Bartow
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 Dedication

To Howie Dickerman at Microsoft. Have a great retirement!

—Bill Jelen

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 Contents at a Glance

Acknowledgments xxi
About the Author xxiii
Introduction xxv
CHAPTER 1 Pivot table fundamentals 1
CHAPTER 2 Creating a basic pivot table 11
CHAPTER 3 Customizing a pivot table 43
CHAPTER 4 Grouping, sorting, and filtering pivot data 77
CHAPTER 5 Performing calculations in pivot tables 121
CHAPTER 6 Using pivot charts and other visualizations 149
CHAPTER 7 Analyzing disparate data sources with pivot tables 175
CHAPTER 8 Sharing dashboards with Power BI 207
CHAPTER 9 Using cube formulas with the Data Model or OLAP data 225
CHAPTER 10 Unlocking features with the Data Model and Power Pivot 257
CHAPTER 11 Analyzing geographic data with 3D Map 285
CHAPTER 12 Enhancing pivot table reports with macros 301
CHAPTER 13 Using VBA or TypeScript to create pivot tables 321
CHAPTER 14 Advanced pivot table tips and techniques 389
CHAPTER 15 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. GetPivotData 435
CHAPTER 16 Creating pivot tables in Excel Online 453
CHAPTER 17 
Pivoting without a pivot table using dynamic arrays
or Power Query 465
CHAPTER 18 Unpivoting in Power Query 479
Afterword 495
Index 497

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 Contents
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxi
About the Author. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxiii
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxv

Chapter 1 Pivot table fundamentals 1

Why you should use a pivot table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
When to use a pivot table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Anatomy of a pivot table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Values area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Rows area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Columns area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Filters area. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Pivot tables behind the scenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Pivot table backward compatibility. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
A word about compatibility. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Next steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Chapter 2 Creating a basic pivot table 11

Ensuring that data is in a Tabular layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Avoiding storing data in section headings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Avoiding repeating groups as columns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Eliminating gaps and blank cells in the data source. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Applying appropriate type formatting to fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Summary of good data source design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
How to create a basic pivot table. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Adding fields to a report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Fundamentals of laying out a pivot table report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Adding layers to a pivot table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Rearranging a pivot table. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Creating a report filter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

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 Understanding the Recommended PivotTable and the
Analyze Data features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Using slicers to filter your report. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Creating a standard slicer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Creating a Timeline slicer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Keeping up with changes in the data source . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Dealing with changes made to the existing data source . . . . . . . . . . 37
Dealing with an expanded data source range due
to the addition of rows or columns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Sharing the pivot cache or creating a new cache . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Side effects of sharing a pivot cache . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Saving time with PivotTable tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Deferring layout updates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Starting over with one click . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Relocating a pivot table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Next steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Chapter 3 Customizing a pivot table 43

Making common cosmetic changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Applying a table style to restore gridlines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Changing the number format to add thousands separators. . . . . . . 46
Replacing blanks with zeros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Changing a field name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Making report layout changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Using the Compact layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Using the Outline layout. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Using the traditional Tabular layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Controlling blank lines, grand totals, and other settings . . . . . . . . . . 56
Customizing a pivot table’s appearance with styles and themes. . . . . . . . . 59
Customizing a style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Modifying styles with document themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Changing summary calculations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
The Excel team fixed the Count Of Revenue bug . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Changing the calculation in a value field. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

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 Showing percentage of total. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Using % Of to compare one line to another line. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Showing rank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Tracking running total and percentage of running total . . . . . . . . . . 69
Displaying a change from a previous field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Tracking the percentage of a parent item. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Tracking relative importance with the Index option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Adding and removing subtotals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Suppressing subtotals with many row fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Adding multiple subtotals for one field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Formatting one cell is new in Microsoft 365 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Next steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

Chapter 4 Grouping, sorting, and filtering pivot data 77

Using the PivotTable Fields list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Docking and undocking the PivotTable Fields list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Minimizing PivotTable Fields pane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Rearranging the PivotTable Fields list. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Using the Areas section drop-downs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Sorting in a pivot table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Sorting customers into high-to-low sequence based
on revenue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Using a manual sort sequence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Using a custom list for sorting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Filtering a pivot table: an overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Using filters for row and column fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Filtering using the check boxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Filtering using the search box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Filtering using the Label Filters option. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Filtering a Label column using information in a Values column. . . . 94
Creating a top-five report using the Top 10 filter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Filtering using the Date filters in the Label drop-down menu . . . . . 97
Filtering using the Filters area. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

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 Adding fields to the Filters area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Choosing one item from a filter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Choosing multiple items from a filter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Replicating a pivot table report for each item in a filter. . . . . . . . . . 100
Filtering using slicers and timelines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Using timelines to filter by date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Driving multiple pivot tables from one set of slicers . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Grouping and creating hierarchies in a pivot table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Grouping numeric fields. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Grouping date fields manually . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Including years when grouping by months . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Grouping date fields by week . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Creating an easy year-over-year report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Creating hierarchies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Next steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

Chapter 5 Performing calculations in pivot tables 121

Introducing calculated fields and calculated items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Method 1: Manually add a calculated field to the data source . . . . 122
Method 2: Use a formula outside a pivot table to
create a calculated field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Method 3: Insert a calculated field directly into a pivot table . . . . . 124
Creating a calculated field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Creating a calculated item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
Understanding the rules and shortcomings of pivot table
calculations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Remembering the order of operator precedence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
Using cell references and named ranges. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Using worksheet functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Using constants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Referencing totals. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Rules specific to calculated fields. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Rules specific to calculated items. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Managing and maintaining pivot table calculations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146

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 Editing and deleting pivot table calculations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Changing the solve order of calculated items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Documenting formulas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
Next steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148

Chapter 6 Using pivot charts and other visualizations 149

What is a pivot chart…really?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Creating a pivot chart. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
Understanding pivot field buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Creating a Pivot Chart from scratch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Keeping pivot chart rules in mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
Changes in the underlying pivot table affect a pivot chart . . . . . . . 154
Placement of data fields in a pivot table might not
be best suited for a pivot chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
A few formatting limitations still exist in Excel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
Examining alternatives to using pivot charts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Method 1: Turn the pivot table into hard values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Method 2: Delete the underlying pivot table. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
Method 3: Distribute a picture of the pivot chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
Method 4: Use cells linked back to the pivot table as the
source data for the chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Using conditional formatting with pivot tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
An example of using conditional formatting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Preprogrammed scenarios for condition levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Creating custom conditional formatting rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
Next steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

Chapter 7 Analyzing disparate data sources with pivot tables 175

Using the Data Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
Building out your first Data Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
Managing relationships in the Data Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Adding a new table to the Data Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
Limitations of the Data Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180

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 Building a pivot table using external data sources. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
Building a pivot table with Microsoft Access data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
Building a pivot table with SQL Server data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
Leveraging Power Query to extract and transform data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Power Query basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
Understanding applied steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Refreshing Power Query data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
Managing existing queries. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
Understanding column-level actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
Understanding table actions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
Power Query connection types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
One more Power Query example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
Next steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206

Chapter 8 Sharing dashboards with Power BI 207

Getting started with Power BI Desktop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Preparing data in Excel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
Importing data to Power BI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
Getting oriented to Power BI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
Preparing data in Power BI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Defining synonyms in Power BI Desktop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Building an interactive report with Power BI Desktop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Building your first visualization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Building your second visualization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
Cross-filtering charts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
Creating a drill-down hierarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Importing a custom visualization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Publishing to Power BI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
Designing for the mobile phone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
Publishing to a workspace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
Next steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224

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 Chapter 9 Using cube formulas with the Data Model
or OLAP data 225
Converting your pivot table to cube formulas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
Introduction to OLAP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
Connecting to an OLAP cube . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
Understanding the structure of an OLAP cube . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
Understanding the limitations of OLAP pivot tables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
Creating an offline cube . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
Breaking out of the pivot table mold with cube functions . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
Exploring cube functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
Adding calculations to OLAP pivot tables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
Creating calculated measures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
Creating calculated members. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
Managing OLAP calculations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
Performing what-if analysis with OLAP data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
Next steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255

Chapter 10 Unlocking features with the Data Model

and Power Pivot 257
Replacing VLOOKUP with the Data Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
Unlocking hidden features with the Data Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
Counting Distinct in a pivot table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
Including filtered items in totals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
Creating median in a pivot table using DAX measures. . . . . . . . . . . 266
Reporting text in the Values area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
Processing big data with Power Query . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
Adding a new column using Power Query . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
Power Query is like the Macro Recorder but better. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
Avoiding the Excel grid by loading to the Data Model . . . . . . . . . . . 273
Adding a linked table. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
Defining a relationship between two tables using
Diagram View. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
Adding calculated columns in the Power Pivot grid . . . . . . . . . . . . 276

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 Sorting one column by another column . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
Creating a pivot table from the Data Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
Using advanced Power Pivot techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
Handling complicated relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
Using time intelligence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
Overcoming limitations of the Data Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
Enjoying other benefits of Power Pivot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
Create all future pivot tables using the Data Model . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
Learning more . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
Next steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283

Chapter 11 Analyzing geographic data with 3D Map 285

Analyzing geographic data with 3D Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
Preparing data for 3D Map. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
Geocoding data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
Building a column chart in 3D Map. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
Navigating through the map. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
Labeling individual points. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
Building pie or bubble charts on a map. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
Using heat maps and region maps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
Exploring 3D Map settings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
Fine-tuning 3D Map. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
Combining two data sets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
Animating data over time. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
Building a tour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
Creating a video from 3D Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
Next steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299

Chapter 12 Enhancing pivot table reports with macros 301

Using macros with pivot table reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
Recording a macro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
Creating a user interface with form controls. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304

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 Altering a recorded macro to add functionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306
Inserting a scrollbar form control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
Creating a macro using Power Query. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
Next steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320

Chapter 13 Using VBA or TypeScript to create pivot tables 321

Enabling VBA in your copy of Excel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
Using a file format that enables macros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
Visual Basic Editor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323
Visual Basic tools. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
The macro recorder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
Understanding object-oriented code. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
Learning tricks of the trade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
Writing code to handle a data range of any size. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
Using super-variables: Object variables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
Using With and End With to shorten code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328
Understanding versions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328
Building a pivot table in Excel VBA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
Adding fields to the data area. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
Formatting the pivot table. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332
Dealing with limitations of pivot tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
Filling blank cells in the data area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
Filling blank cells in the row area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
Preventing errors from inserting or deleting cells . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
Controlling totals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336
Converting a pivot table to values. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337
Pivot table 201: Creating a report showing revenue by category. . . . . . . . 340
Ensuring that Tabular layout is utilized . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342
Rolling daily dates up to years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342
Eliminating blank cells . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344
Controlling the sort order with AutoSort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
Changing the default number format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345

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 Suppressing subtotals for multiple row fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346
Copying a finished pivot table as values to a new workbook . . . . . 347
Handling final formatting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348
Adding subtotals to get page breaks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348
Putting it all together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349
Calculating with a pivot table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352
Addressing issues with two or more data fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352
Using calculations other than Sum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
Using calculated data fields. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356
Using calculated items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
Calculating groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359
Using Show Values As to perform other calculations . . . . . . . . . . . . 360
Using advanced pivot table techniques. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363
Using AutoShow to produce executive overviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363
Using ShowDetail to filter a Recordset. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365
Creating reports for each region or model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367
Manually filtering two or more items in a pivot field. . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
Using the conceptual filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372
Using the search filter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
Setting up slicers to filter a pivot table. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376
Using the Data Model in Excel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
Adding both tables to the Data Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
Creating a relationship between the two tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
Defining the pivot cache and building the pivot table . . . . . . . . . . . 381
Adding model fields to the pivot table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
Adding numeric fields to the Values area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
Putting it all together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382
Using TypeScript in Excel Online to create pivot tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384
Next steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387

Chapter 14 Advanced pivot table tips and techniques 389

Tip 1: Force pivot tables to refresh automatically . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390
Tip 2: Refresh all pivot tables in a workbook at the same time. . . . . . . . . . 390

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 Tip 3: Sort data items in a unique order, not ascending or
descending . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391
Tip 4: Using (or prevent using) a custom list for sorting
your pivot table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
Tip 5: Use pivot table defaults to change the behavior of
all future pivot tables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394
Tip 6: Turn pivot tables into hard data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395
Tip 7: Fill the empty cells left by row fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 396
Option 1: Implement the Repeat All Item Labels feature . . . . . . . . . 397
Option 2: Use Excel’s Go To Special functionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398
Tip 8: Add a rank number field to a pivot table. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
Tip 9: Reduce the size of pivot table reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401
Delete the source data worksheet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401
Tip 10: Create an automatically expanding data range . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401
Tip 11: Compare tables using a pivot table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
Tip 12: AutoFilter a pivot table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404
Tip 13: Force two number formats in a pivot table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407
Tip 14: Format individual values in a pivot table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408
Tip 15: Format sections of a pivot table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410
Tip 16: Create a frequency distribution with a pivot table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412
Tip 17: Use a pivot table to explode a data set to different tabs . . . . . . . . . 414
Tip 18: Apply restrictions on pivot tables and pivot fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
Pivot table restrictions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
Pivot field restrictions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417
Tip 19: Use a pivot table to explode a data set to different
workbooks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418
Tip 20: Use percentage change from previous for year-over-year . . . . . . 420
Tip 21: Do a two-way VLOOKUP with Power Query. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423
Tip 22: Slicer to control data from two different data sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428
Tip 23: Format your slicers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432
Next steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 434

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 Chapter 15 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. GetPivotData 435
Avoiding the evil GetPivotData problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436
Preventing GetPivotData by typing the formula . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439
Simply turning off GetPivotData . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439
Speculating on why Microsoft forced GetPivotData on us . . . . . . . 440
Using GetPivotData to solve pivot table annoyances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441
Building an ugly pivot table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443
Building the shell report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446
Using GetPivotData to populate the shell report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448
Updating the report in future months . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451
Next steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452

Chapter 16 Creating pivot tables in Excel Online 453

How to sign in to Excel Online . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 454
Creating a pivot table in Excel Online. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455
Changing pivot table options in Excel Online. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 458
Where are the rest of the features? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462
Next steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463

Chapter 17 Pivoting without a pivot table using dynamic

arrays or Power Query 465
Creating cross-tabs using an Advanced Filter and a Data Table . . . . . . . . 465
Getting a unique list of values with Advanced Filter . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466
Aggregating revenue with DSUMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468
Replicating DSUM for each combination of sector
and region. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468
What are the pros and cons of this method? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 470
Creating a cross-tab report using three dynamic array formulas . . . . . . . 471
Getting a unique list of values using dynamic arrays. . . . . . . . . . . . . 471
Filling in the revenue amounts using SUMIFS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472
What are the pros and cons of this method? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472
Creating a cross-tab using Power Query . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473
Getting your data into Power Query. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473
Summarizing revenue by sector and region in power query . . . . . 474

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 Sorting and pivoting in Power Query . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475
Cleaning final steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 476
What are the pros and cons of Power Query? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477
Next steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478

Chapter 18 Unpivoting in Power Query 479

Data in headings creates bad pivot tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479
Using Unpivot in Power Query to transform the data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481
Unpivoting from two rows of headings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484
Unpivoting from a delimited cell to new rows. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 492
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 494

Afterword 495
Index 497

Contents xix

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This page intentionally left blank
 Acknowledgments

A t Microsoft, thanks to the Excel team for always being willing to answer questions
about various features. At MrExcel.com, thanks to an entire community of people
who are passionate about Excel. Thanks to Bob Umlas for his tech editing of this book
and to the Kughens for their project management. Finally, thanks to my wife, Mary Ellen,
for her support during the writing process.

—Bill Jelen

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This page intentionally left blank
 About the Author
Bill Jelen, Excel MVP and the host of MrExcel.com, has
been using spreadsheets since 1985, and he launched the
MrExcel.com website in 1998. Bill was a regular guest on
Call for Help with Leo Laporte and has produced more
than 2,400 episodes of his daily video podcast, Learn Excel
from MrExcel. He is the author of 64 books about Micro-
soft Excel and writes the monthly Excel column for
Strategic Finance magazine. Before founding MrExcel.com, Bill spent 12 years in the
trenches, working as a financial analyst for the finance, marketing, accounting, and
operations departments of a $500 million public company. He lives in Merritt Island,
Florida, with his wife, Mary Ellen.

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This page intentionally left blank
 Introduction

T he pivot table is the single most powerful tool in all of Excel. Pivot tables came along
during the 1990s, when Microsoft and Lotus were locked in a bitter battle for domi-
nance of the spreadsheet market. The race to continually add enhanced features to their
respective products during the mid-1990s led to many incredible features, but none as
powerful as the pivot table.

With a pivot table, you can transform one million rows of transactional data into a
summary report in seconds. If you can drag a mouse, you can create a pivot table. In
addition to quickly summarizing and calculating data, pivot tables enable you to change
your analysis on the fly by simply moving fields from one area of a report to another.

No other tool in Excel gives you the flexibility and analytical power of a pivot table.
The Power Query tools that debuted between Excel 2013 and Excel 2016 come close to
the power of a pivot table. You will see some Power Query examples in Chapter 17,
“Pivoting without a pivot table using dynamic arrays or Power Query,” and Chapter 18,
“Unpivoting in Power Query.”

What you will learn from this book

It is widely agreed that close to 60 percent of Excel customers leave 80 percent of Excel
untouched—that is, most people do not tap into the full potential of Excel’s built-in utili-
ties. Of these utilities, the most prolific by far is the pivot table. Despite the fact that pivot
tables have been a cornerstone of Excel for almost 30 years, they remain one of the most
underutilized tools in the entire Microsoft Office suite.

Having picked up this book, you are savvy enough to have heard of pivot tables—and
you have perhaps even used them on occasion. You have a sense that pivot tables pro-
vide a power that you are not using, and you want to learn how to leverage that power to
increase your productivity quickly.

Within the first two chapters, you will be able to create basic pivot tables, increase
your productivity, and produce reports in minutes instead of hours. Within the first seven
chapters, you will be able to output complex pivot reports with drill-down capabilities
and accompanying charts. By the end of the book, you will be able to build a dynamic
pivot table reporting system.

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 What is new in Microsoft 365 Excel’s pivot tables
You can now create a pivot table while using Excel Online. It does not offer all the
features of Excel for Windows, but being able to create a pivot table in Excel Online is a
giant leap for the online version of Excel. It was just three years ago that I wrote in the
previous edition of this book that Excel Online would never allow you to create pivot
tables, and three years later, they do it. You can’t tweak them like you can in Windows,
but you can create pivot tables.

Office 365 offers a new Analyze Data feature that is powered by Artificial Intelligence.
Select a data set with up to 250,000 cells and ask Excel to analyze the data. Excel will sug-
gest about 30 interesting analyses, including several pivot tables.

The Analyze Data feature allows you to ask a question about your data. There is a
fairly high chance that the answer will be provided as a pivot table or a pivot chart. So,
Analyze Data and Ask a Question become new entry points for creating pivot tables.

If you missed the 2019 edition of this book, these features were new since Excel 2016:

■■ You can specify default settings for all future pivot tables.

■■ The automatic date grouping introduced in Excel 2016 pivot tables can now be
turned off. A mix of empty cells and numeric cells will be treated like a numeric
column and will default to Sum instead of Count.

■■ Power Pivot is now included in all Windows versions of Excel 2019 and Office 365.

Case Study: Life Without Pivot Tables

Say that your manager asks you to create a one-page summary of a sales database. He would
like to see total revenue by region and product. Suppose you do not know how to use pivot
tables. You will have to use dozens of keystrokes or mouse clicks to complete this task.

This sample data set (included with the download files for the book—see page xxxii)
has headings in row 1 and data in rows 2 through 564 and columns in column A through
column I.

First, you have to get a sorted, unique list of products down the left side of the summary
report and a sorted unique list of products across the top. In the past, this might involve an
Advanced Filter or the Remove Duplicates command. But today, it is easiest with a formula.

1.  nter =SORT(UNIQUE(B2:B564)) in cell K2. You will have a list of the unique
E
region names spilling to K2:K5.

2. To get a list of unique products across the top of the report, enter =TRANSPOSE(
SORT(UNIQUE(C2:C564))) in cell L1.

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 At this point, with 57 keystrokes, you’ve built the shell of the final report, but there are
no numbers inside yet (see Figure I-1).

FIGURE I-1 It took 57 keystrokes to get to this point.

Next, you need to build a SUMIFS function to total the revenue for each Region and
Product. As shown in Figure I-2, the formula =SUMIFS(G2:G564,B2:B564,K2#,C2:C56
4,L1#) does the trick. It takes 40 characters plus the Enter key to finish the formula

FIGURE I-2 If Before Dynamic Arrays were introduced, the formula in L2 would have needed dollar
signs and then been copied to all sixteen cells showing numbers.

Enter the heading Total for the total row and for the total column. You can do this in
nine keystrokes if you type the first heading, press Ctrl+Enter to stay in the same cell,
and then use Copy, select the cell for the second heading, and use Paste.

If you select K1:P6 and press Alt+= (that is, Alt and the equal sign key), you can add the
total formula in three keystrokes.

With this method, which takes 110 clicks or keystrokes, you end up with a nice sum-
mary report, as shown in Figure I-3. If you could pull this off in 5 or 10 minutes, you
would probably be fairly proud of your Excel prowess; there are some good tricks
among those 110 operations.

FIGURE I-3 A mere 110 operations later, you have a summary report.

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 You hand the report to your manager. Within a few minutes, he comes back with one
of the following requests, which will certainly cause a lot of rework:

■■ Could you put products down the side and regions across the top?
■■ Could you show me the same report for only the manufacturing customers?
■■ Could you show profit instead of revenue?
■■ Could you copy this report for each of the customers?

Invention of the pivot table

When the actual pivot table was invented is in dispute. The Excel team coined the term
pivot table, which appeared in Excel in 1993. However, the concept was not new. Pito
Salas and his team at Lotus were working on the pivot table concept in 1986 and
released Lotus Improv in 1991. Before then, Javelin offered functionality similar to that
of pivot tables.

The core concept behind a pivot table is that the data, formulas, and data views are
stored separately. Each column has a name, and you can group and rearrange the data
by dragging field names to various positions on the report.

Case Study: Life After Pivot Tables

Say that you’re tired of working so hard to remake reports every time your manager
wants a change. You’re in luck: You can produce the same report as in the last case study
but use a pivot table instead. Excel offers you 10 thumbnails of recommended pivot
tables to get you close to the goal. Follow these steps:

1. Click the Insert tab of the ribbon.

2. Click Recommended PivotTables. The first recommended item is Revenue

By Region (see Figure I-4).

3. Click OK to accept the first pivot table.

4. Drag the Product field from the PivotTable Fields list to the Columns area (see
Figure I-5).

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 FIGURE I-4 The first recommended pivot table is as close as you will get to the required report.

FIGURE I-5 To finish the report, drag the Product heading to the Columns area.

With just four clicks of the mouse, you have the report shown in Figure I-6.

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 FIGURE I-6 It took five clicks to create this report.

In addition, when your manager comes back with a request like the ones near the
end of the prior case study, you can easily use the pivot table to make the changes.
Here’s a quick overview of the changes you’ll learn to make in the chapters that
follow:
■■ Could you put products down the side and regions across the top? (This change will
take you 10 seconds: Drag Product to Rows and Region to Columns.)
■■ Could you show me the same report for only the manufacturing customers?
(15 seconds: Select Insert Slicer, Sector; click OK; click Manufacturing.)
■■ Could you show profit instead of revenue? (10 seconds: Clear the check box for
Revenue, select the check box for Profit.)
■■ Could you copy this report for each of the customers? (30 seconds: Move Customer
to Report Filter, open the tiny drop-down menu next to the Options button, choose
Show Report Filter Pages, click OK.)

Creating a Pivot Table Using Artificial Intelligence

The new Analyze Data tool uses artificial intelligence to analyze a data set. You can type
a question in natural language and Excel will create a pivot table.

With one cell in your data set selected, choose the Analyze Data command on the
right side of the Home tab. The Analyze Data pane appears with several suggested
analyses. In the Ask a Question box at the top, type Revenue by Product and Region
as Table and press Enter.

Excel will draw a thumbnail of your report. Click +Insert PivotTable at the bottom of
the thumbnail.

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 FIGURE I-7 Slightly more typing, but certainly easier to create

Who this book is for

This book is a comprehensive-enough reference for hard-core analysts yet relevant to
casual users of Excel.

We assume that you are comfortable navigating in Excel and that you have some
large data sets that you need to summarize.

How this book is organized

The bulk of the book covers how to use pivot tables in the Excel user interface. Chapter 10,
“Unlocking features with the Data Model and Power Pivot,” delves into the Power Pivot
window. Chapter 13, “Using VBA or TypeScript to create pivot tables,” describes how
to create pivot tables in Excel’s powerful VBA macro language. Anyone who has a firm
grasp of basics such as preparing data, copying, pasting, and entering simple formulas
should not have a problem understanding the concepts in this book.

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 About the companion content
The download files for this book include all of the data sets used to produce the book,
so you can practice the concepts in the book. You can download this book’s companion
content from the following page:

MicrosoftPressStore.com/Excel365pivotdata/downloads

System requirements
You need the following software and hardware to build and run the code samples for
this book:

Microsoft Excel running on a Windows computer. (Yes, Excel runs on an iPad, on an

Android tablet but none of those are going to support creation of pivot tables anytime soon.)
For people using Excel on a Mac, some of the basic pivot table concepts will apply. Power
Query and Power Pivot will not run on a Mac. For people using Excel Online, you can make
many of the pivot tables in this book, but you won’t be able to do as much formatting.

Errata, updates, and book support

We’ve made every effort to ensure the accuracy of this book and its companion content.
You can access updates to this book—in the form of a list of submitted errata and their
related corrections—at the following page:

MicrosoftPressStore.com/Excel365pivotdata/errata

If you discover an error that is not already listed, please submit it to us at the
same page.

For additional book support and information, please visit:

MicrosoftPressStore.com/Support

Please note that product support for Microsoft software and hardware is not offered
through the previous addresses. For help with Microsoft software or hardware, go to
http://support.microsoft.com.

Stay in touch
Let’s keep the conversation going! We’re on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/MicrosoftPress

http://twitter.com/MrExcel

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 CHAPTER 3

Customizing a pivot table

In this chapter, you will:

■■ Make common cosmetic changes

■■ Make report layout changes

■■ Customize a pivot table’s appearance with styles and themes

■■ Change summary calculations

■■ Change the calculation in a value field

■■ Add and remove subtotals

Although pivot tables provide an extremely fast way to summarize data, sometimes the pivot table
defaults are not exactly what you need. In such cases, you can use many powerful settings to tweak
pivot tables. These tweaks range from making cosmetic changes to changing the underlying calcula-
tion used in the pivot table.

Many of the changes in this chapter can be customized for all future pivot tables using the new pivot
table default settings. If you find yourself always making the same changes to a pivot table, consider
making that change in the pivot table defaults.

In Excel, you find controls to customize a pivot table in myriad places: the PivotTable Analyze tab,
Design tab, Field Settings dialog box, Data Field Settings dialog box, PivotTable Options dialog box,
and context menus.

Rather than cover each set of controls sequentially, this chapter covers the following functional areas
in making pivot table customizations:

■■ Minor cosmetic changes—Change blanks to zeros, adjust the number format, and rename a
field. If you find yourself making the same changes to each pivot table, see Tip 5: Use Pivot Table
Defaults To Change Behavior Of All Future Pivot Tables in Chapter 14.

■■ Layout changes—Compare three possible layouts, show/hide subtotals and totals, and repeat
row labels.

■■ Major cosmetic changes—Use pivot table styles to format a pivot table quickly.

■■ Summary calculations—Change from Sum to Count, Min, Max, and more.

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 ■■ Advanced calculations—Use settings to show data as a running total, percent of total, rank,
percent of parent item, and more.

■■ Other options—Review some of the obscure options found throughout the Excel interface.

Making common cosmetic changes

You need to make a few changes to almost every pivot table to make it easier to understand and
interpret. Figure 3-1 shows a typical pivot table. To create this pivot table, open the Chapter 3 data file.
Select Insert, Pivot Table, OK. Select the Sector, Customer, and Revenue fields check boxes, and drag
the Region field to the Columns area.

FIGURE 3-1 A typical pivot table before customization.

This default pivot table contains several annoying items that you might want to change quickly:

■■ The default table style uses no gridlines, which makes it difficult to follow the rows and columns
across and down.

■■ Numbers in the Values area are in a general number format. There are no commas, currency
symbols, and so on.

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 ■■ For sparse data sets, many blanks appear in the Values area. The blank cell in E5 indicates that
there were no Associations sales in the Midwest. Most people prefer to see zeros instead of blanks.

■■ Excel renames fields in the Values area with the unimaginative name Sum Of Revenue. You can
change this name.

You can correct each of these annoyances with just a few mouse clicks. The following sections
address each issue.

Tip Excel MVP Debra Dalgleish sells a Pivot Power Premium add-in that fixes most of
the issues listed here. Debra’s add-in offers a few more features than the new PivotTable
Defaults. This add-in is great if you will be creating pivot tables frequently. For more infor-
mation, visit http://mrx.cl/pivpow16.

Applying a table style to restore gridlines

The default pivot table layout contains no gridlines and is rather plain. Fortunately, you can apply a
table style. Any table style that you choose is better than the default.

Follow these steps to apply a table style:

1. Make sure that the active cell is in the pivot table.

2. From the ribbon, select the Design tab. Three arrows appear at the right side of the PivotTable
Style gallery.

3. Click the bottom arrow to open the complete gallery, which is shown in Figure 3-2.

FIGURE 3-2 The gallery contains 85 styles to choose from.

4. Choose any style other than the first style from the drop-down menu. Styles toward the
bottom of the gallery tend to have more formatting.

5. Select the check box for Banded Rows to the left of the PivotTable Styles gallery. This draws
gridlines in light styles and adds row stripes in dark styles.

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 It does not matter which style you choose from the gallery; any of the 84 other styles are better than
the default style.

Note For more details about customizing styles, see “Customizing a pivot table’s appear-
ance with styles and themes,” later in this chapter.

Changing the number format to add thousands separators

If you have gone to the trouble of formatting your underlying data, you might expect that the pivot
table will capture some of this formatting. Unfortunately, it does not. Even if your underlying data fields
were formatted with a certain numeric format, the default pivot table presents values formatted with
a general format. As a sign of some progress, when you create pivot tables from Power Pivot, you can
specify the number format for a field before creating the pivot table. This functionality has not come to
regular pivot tables yet.

Note For more about Power Pivot, read Chapter 10, “Unlocking features with the Data
Model and Power Pivot.”

For example, in the figures in this chapter, the numbers are in the thousands or tens of thousands.
At this level of sales, you would normally have a thousands separator and probably no decimal places.
Although the original data had a numeric format applied, the pivot table routinely formats your num-
bers in an ugly general style.

What is the fastest way to change the number format? It depends if you have a single value field or
multiple value fields.

In Figure 3-3, the pivot table Values area contains Revenue. There are many columns in the pivot
table because Product is in the Columns area. In this case, right-click any number and choose Number
Format.

FIGURE 3-3 For a single value field, right-click any number and choose Number Format.

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 In contrast to Figure 3-3, the pivot table in Figure 3-4 contains three fields in the Values area: Rev-
enue, Cost, and Profit. Rather than applying the Number Format to each individual column, you can
format the entire pivot table by following these steps:

1. Select from the first numeric cell to the last numeric cell, including the Grand Total row or
column if it is present.

2. Press Ctrl+1 to display the Format Cells dialog box.

3. Choose the Number tab across the top of the dialog box.

4. Select a number format.

5. Click OK.

Until a coding change in Excel 2010, the preceding steps would not change the number format
in cases where the pivot table became taller. However, provided you include the Grand Total in your
selection, these steps will change the number format for all the fields in the Values area.

FIGURE 3-4 With multiple fields in the Values area, select all number cells as shown here and change the format
using the Format Cells dialog box.

Replacing blanks with zeros

One of the elements of good spreadsheet design is that you should never leave blank cells in a numeric
section of a worksheet.

A blank tells you that there were no sales for a particular combination of labels. In the default view,
an actual zero is used to indicate that there was activity, but the total sales were zero. This value might
mean that a customer bought something and then returned it, resulting in net sales of zero. Although

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 there are limited applications in which you need to differentiate between having no sales and having
net zero sales, this seems rare. In 99% of the cases, you should fill in the blank cells with zeros.

Follow these steps to change this setting for the current pivot table:

1. Right-click any cell in the pivot table and choose PivotTable Options.

2. On the Layout & Format tab in the Format section, type 0 next to the field labeled For Empty
Cells Show (see Figure 3-5). Alternatively, you can unselect the For Empty Cells Show option.
Or, you can type anything here, such as a dash or even the words zip, nada, nothing.

Enter a zero here

FIGURE 3-5 Enter a zero in the For Empty Cells Show box to replace the blank cells with zero.

3. Click OK to accept the change.

The result is that the pivot table is filled with zeros instead of blanks, as shown in Figure 3-6.

FIGURE 3-6 Your report is now a solid contiguous block of non-blank cells.

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 Changing a field name
Every field in a final pivot table has a name. Fields in the row, column, and filter areas inherit their
names from the heading in the source data. Fields in the values section are given names such as Sum
Of Revenue. In some instances, you might prefer to print a different name in the pivot table. You might
prefer Total Revenue instead of the default name. In these situations, the capability to change your field
names comes in quite handy.

Tip Although many of the names are inherited from headings in the original data set,
when your data is from an external data source, you might not have control over field
names. In these cases, you might want to change the names of the fields as well.

To change a field name in the Values area, follow these steps:

1. Select a cell in the pivot table that contains the appropriate type of value. You might have a
pivot table with both Sum Of Quantity and Sum Of Revenue in the Values area. Choose a cell
that contains a Sum Of Revenue value.

2. Go to the PivotTable Analyze tab in the ribbon. A Pivot Field Name text box appears below the
heading Active Field. The box currently contains Sum Of Revenue.

3. Type a new name in the box, as shown in Figure 3-7. Click a cell in your pivot table to complete
the entry and have the heading in A3 change. The name of the field title in the Values area
also changes to reflect the new name.

FIGURE 3-7 The name typed in the Custom Name box appears in the pivot table. Although names should be
unique, you can trick Excel into accepting a name that’s similar to an existing name by adding a space to the
end of it.

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 Tip When you can see the value field name such as “Sum of Revenue” in the Excel work-
sheet, you can directly type a new value to rename the field. For example, in Figure 3-7, you
could type Sales in cell A3 to rename the field.

Note One common frustration occurs when you would like to rename Sum Of Revenue to
Revenue. The problem is that this name is not allowed because it is not unique; you already
have a Revenue field in the source data. To work around this limitation, you can name the
field and add a space to the end of the name. Excel considers “Revenue ” (with a space) to be
different from “Revenue” (with no space). Because this change is only cosmetic, the readers
of your spreadsheet do not notice the space after the name.

Making report layout changes

Excel offers three report layout styles. The Excel team continues to offer the Compact layout as the
default report layout. If you prefer a different layout, change it using the default settings for pivot
tables.

If you consider three report layouts, and the ability to show subtotals at the top or bottom, plus
choices for blank rows and Repeat All Item Labels, you have 16 different layout possibilities available.

Layout changes are controlled in the Layout group of the Design tab, as shown in Figure 3-8. This
group offers four icons:

■■ Subtotals—Moves subtotals to the top or bottom of each group or turns them off.

■■ Grand Totals—Turns the grand totals on or off for rows and columns.

■■ Report Layout—Uses the Compact, Outline, or Tabular forms. Offers an option to repeat item
labels.

■■ Blank Rows—Inserts or removes blank lines after each group.

Note You mathematicians in the audience might think that 3 layouts × 2 repeat options
× 2 subtotal location options × 2 blank row options would be 24 layouts. However, choos-
ing Repeat All Item Labels does not work with the Compact layout, thus eliminating 4 of
the combinations. In addition, Subtotals At The Top Of Each Group does not work with the
Tabular layout, eliminating another 4 combinations.

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 FIGURE 3-8 The Layout group on the Design tab offers different layouts and options for totals.

Using the Compact layout

By default, all new pivot tables use the Compact layout that you saw in Figure 3-6. In this layout, mul-
tiple fields in the row area are stacked in column A. Note in the figure that the Consultants sector and
the Andrew Spain Consulting customer are both in column A.

The Compact form is suited for using the Expand and Collapse icons. If you select one of the Sector
value cells such as Associations in A5 and then click the Collapse Field icon on the Analyze tab, Excel
hides all the customer details and shows only the sectors, as shown in Figure 3-9.

FIGURE 3-9 Click the Collapse Field icon to hide levels of detail.

After a field is collapsed, you can show detail for individual items by using the plus icons in column
A, or you can click Expand Field on the PivotTable Analyze tab to see the detail again.

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 Tip If you select a cell in the innermost row field and click Expand Field on the Options tab,
Excel displays the Show Detail dialog box, as shown in Figure 3-10, to enable you to add a
new innermost row field.

FIGURE 3-10 When you attempt to expand the innermost field, Excel offers to add a new innermost field.

Using the Outline layout

When you select Design, Layout, Report Layout, Show In Outline Form, Excel puts each row field in a
separate column. The pivot table shown in Figure 3-11 is one column wider, with revenue values starting
in C instead of B. This is a small price to pay for allowing each field to occupy its own column. Soon, you
will find out how to convert a pivot table to values so you can further sort or filter. When you do this,
you will want each field in its own column.

The Excel team added the Repeat All Item Labels option to the Report Layout tab starting in Excel
2010. This alleviated a lot of busy work because it takes just two clicks to fill in all the blank cells along
the outer row fields. Choosing to repeat the item labels causes values to appear in cells A6:A7, A9:A14,
as shown in Figure 3-11.

Figure 3-11 shows the same pivot table from before, now in Outline form and with labels repeated.

Caution This layout is suitable if you plan to copy the values from the pivot table to a
new location for further analysis. Although the Compact layout offers a clever approach by
squeezing multiple fields into one column, it is not ideal for reusing the data later.

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 FIGURE 3-11 The Outline layout puts each row field in a separate column.

By default, both the Compact and Outline layouts put the subtotals at the top of each group. You
can use the Subtotals drop-down menu on the Design tab to move the totals to the bottom of each
group, as shown in Figure 3-12. In Outline view, this causes a not-really-useful heading row to appear at
the top of each group. Cell A5 contains “Associations” without any additional data in the columns to the
right. Consequently, the pivot table occupies 44 rows instead of 37 rows because each of the 7 sector
categories has an extra header.

FIGURE 3-12 With subtotals at the bottom of each group, the pivot table occupies several more rows.

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 Using the traditional Tabular layout
Figure 3-13 shows the Tabular layout. This layout is similar to the one that has been used in pivot tables
since their invention through Excel 2003. In this layout, the subtotals can never appear at the top of the
group. The Repeat All Item Labels works with this layout, as shown in Figure 3-13.

FIGURE 3-13 The Tabular layout is similar to pivot tables in legacy versions of Excel.

The Tabular layout is the best layout if you expect to use the resulting summary data in a subsequent
analysis. If you wanted to reuse the table in Figure 3-13, you would do additional “flattening” of the pivot
table by choosing Subtotals, Do Not Show Subtotals and Grand Totals, Off For Rows And Columns.

Case study: Converting a pivot table to values

Say that you want to convert the pivot table shown in Figure 3-13 to be a regular data set that
you can sort, filter, chart, or export to another system. You don’t need the Sectors totals in rows
7, 14, 18, and so on. You don’t need the Grand Total at the bottom. And, depending on your
future needs, you might want to move the Region field from the Columns area to the Rows
area. This would allow you to add Cost and Profit as new columns in the final report.
Finally, you want to convert from a live pivot table to static values. To make these changes,
follow these steps:

1. Select any cell in the pivot table.

2. From the Design tab, select Grand Totals, Off For Rows And Columns.

3. Select Design, Subtotals, Do Not Show Subtotals.

4. Drag the Region tile from the Columns area in the PivotTable Fields list. Drop this field
between Sector and Customer in the Rows area.

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 5. Check Profit and Cost in the top of the PivotTable Fields list. Because both fields are numeric,
they move to the Values area and appear in the pivot table as new columns. Rename both
fields using the Current Field box on the PivotTable Analyze tab. The report is now a contigu-
ous solid block of data, as shown in Figure 3-14.

FIGURE 3-14 The pivot table now contains a solid block of data.

6. Select one cell in the pivot table. Press Ctrl+* to select all the data in the pivot table.

7. Press Ctrl+C to copy the data from the pivot table.

8. Select a blank section of a worksheet.

9. Right-click. To the right of the words “Paste Special” is a greater-than sign that leads to a
flyout with 14 ways to Paste Special Choose Paste Values And Number Formatting, as shown in
Figure 3-15. Excel pastes a static copy of the report to the worksheet.

Paste Values and

Number Formatting

FIGURE 3-15 Use Paste Values And Number Formatting to create a static version of the data.

10. If you no longer need the original pivot table, select the entire pivot table and press the Delete
key to clear the cells from the pivot table and free up the area of memory that was holding
the pivot table cache. One way to select the entire pivot table is to use the Select drop-down
menu on the PivotTable Analyze tab and choose Entire PivotTable.

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 The result is a solid block of summary data. These 27 rows are a summary of the 500+ rows in
the original data set, but they also are suitable for exporting to other systems.

Controlling blank lines, grand totals, and other settings

Additional settings on the Design tab enable you to toggle various elements.

The Blank Rows drop-down menu offers the choice Insert Blank Line After Each Item. This setting
applies only to pivot tables with two or more row fields. Blank rows are not added after each item in
the inner row field. You see a blank row after each group of items in the outer row fields. As shown in
Figure 3-16, the blank row after each sector makes the report easier to read. However, if you remove
Sector from the report, you have only Customer in the row fields, and no blank rows appear (see
Figure 3-17).

FIGURE 3-16 The Blank Rows setting makes the report easier to read.

FIGURE 3-17 Blank rows will not appear when there is only one item in the row field.

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 Grand totals can appear at the bottom of each column and/or at the end of each row, or they can
be turned off altogether. Settings for grand totals appear in the Grand Totals drop-down menu of the
Layout group on the Design tab. The wording in this drop-down menu is a bit confusing, so Figure 3-18
shows what each option provides. The default is to show grand totals for rows and columns.

FIGURE 3-18 The wording is confusing, but you can toggle off the grand total column, row, or both.

If you want a grand total column but no grand total at the bottom, choose On For Rows Only, as
shown at the top of Figure 3-18. To me, this seems backward. To keep the grand total column, you have
to choose to turn on grand totals for rows only. I guess the rationale is that each cell in F5:F8 is a grand
total of the row to the left of the cell. Hence, you are showing the grand totals for all the rows but not
for the columns. Perhaps someday Microsoft will ship a version of Excel in English-Midwest where this
setting would be called “Keep the Grand Total Column.” But for now, it remains confusing.

In a similar fashion, to show a grand total row but no grand total column, you open the Grand Totals
menu and choose On For Columns Only. Again, in some twisted version of the English language, cell
B18 is totaling the cells in the column above it.

The final choice, Off For Rows And Columns, is simple enough. Excel shows neither a grand total
column nor a grand total row.

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 Tip You can abandon these confusing menu choices by using the right-click menu. If you
right-click on any cell that has the words “Grand Total,” you can choose Remove Grand Total.

Back in Excel 2003, pivot tables were shown in Tabular layout and logical headings such as Region
and Product would appear in the pivot table, as shown in the top pivot table in Figure 3-19. When the
Excel team switched to Compact form, they replaced those headings with Row Labels and Column
Labels. These add nothing to the report. To toggle off those headings, look on the far-right side of the
PivotTable Analyze tab for an icon called Field Headers and click it to remove Row Labels and Column
Labels from your pivot tables in Compact form.

Region and Product headings

Row Labels and Column Labels

Field Headers off

FIGURE 3-19 The Compact form replaces useful headings with Row Labels. You can turn these off.

Caution When you arrange several pivot tables vertically, as in Figure 3-19, you’ll notice
that changes in one pivot table change the column widths for the entire column, often caus-
ing #### to appear in the other pivot tables. By default, Excel changes the column width
to AutoFit the pivot table but ignores anything else in the column. To turn off this default
behavior, right-click each pivot table and choose PivotTable Options. In the first tab of the
Options dialog box, the second-to-last check box is AutoFit Column Widths On Update.
Clear this check box. This is another setting that you might want to adjust in Pivot Table
Defaults. See Tip 5 in Chapter 14.

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 Customizing a pivot table’s appearance with styles and themes
You can quickly apply color and formatting to a pivot table report by using the 85 built-in styles in
the PivotTable Styles gallery on the Design tab. These 85 styles are further modified by the four check
boxes to the left of the gallery. Throw in the 48 themes on the Page Layout tab, and you have 65,280
easy ways to format a pivot table. If none of those provide what you need, you can define a new style.

Start with the four check boxes in the PivotTable Style Options group of the Design tab of the rib-
bon. You can choose to apply special formatting to the row headers, column headers, banded rows, or
banded columns. My favorite choice here is banded rows because it makes it easier for the reader’s eye
to follow a row across a wide report. You should choose from these settings first because the choices
here will modify the thumbnails shown in the Styles gallery.

As mentioned earlier, the PivotTable Styles gallery on the Design tab offers 85 built-in styles.
Grouped into 28 styles each of Light, Medium, and Dark, the gallery offers variations on the accent
colors used in the current theme. In Figure 3-20, you can see which styles in the gallery truly support
banded rows and which just offer a bottom border between rows.

True banded rows

Borders between items

FIGURE 3-20 The styles are shown here with accents for row headers, column headers, and alternating colors in the
columns.

Tip Note that you can modify the thumbnails for the 85 styles shown in the gallery by
using the four check boxes in the PivotTable Style Options group.

The Live Preview feature in Excel works in the Styles gallery. As you hover your mouse cursor over
style thumbnails, the worksheet shows a preview of the style.

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 Customizing a style
You can create your own pivot table styles, and the new styles are added to the gallery for the current
workbook only. To use the custom style in another workbook, copy and temporarily paste the format-
ted pivot table to the other workbook. After the pivot table has been pasted, apply the custom style to
an existing pivot table in your workbook and then delete the temporary pivot table.

Say that you want to create a pivot table style in which the banded colors are three rows high. Fol-
low these steps to create the new style:

1. Find an existing style in the PivotTable Styles gallery that supports banded rows. Right-click
the style in the gallery and select Duplicate. Excel displays the Modify PivotTable Quick Style
dialog box.

2. Choose a new name for the style. Excel initially appends a 2 to the existing style name, which
means you have a name such as PivotStyleDark3 2. Type a better name, such as Greenbar.

3. In the Table Element list, click First Row Stripe. A new section called Stripe Size appears in the
dialog box.

4. Select 3 from the Stripe Size drop-down, as shown in Figure 3-21.

5. To change the stripe color, click the Format button. The Format Cells dialog box appears. Click
the Fill tab and then choose a fill color. If you want to be truly authentic, choose More Colors,
Custom and use Red=200, Green=225, and Blue=204 to simulate 1980s-era greenbar paper.
Click OK to accept the color and return to the Modify PivotTable Quick Style dialog box.

6. In the Table Element List, click Second Row Stripe. Select 3 from the Stripe Size drop-down.
Modify the format to use a lighter color, such as white.

7. If you plan on creating more pivot tables in this workbook, choose the Set As Default Pivot-
Table Style For This Document check box in the lower left.

8. Optionally, edit the colors for Header Row and Grand Total Row.

9. Click OK to finish building the style. Strangely, Excel doesn’t automatically apply this new style
to the pivot table. After you put in a few minutes of work to tweak the style, the pivot table
does not change.

10. Your new style should be the first thumbnail visible in the Styles gallery. Click that style to
apply it to the pivot table.

Tip If you have not added more than seven custom styles, the thumbnail should be visible
in the closed gallery, so you can choose it without reopening the gallery.

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 FIGURE 3-21 Customize the style in the Modify PivotTable Style dialog box.

Modifying styles with document themes

The formatting options for pivot tables in Excel are impressive. The 84 styles combined with 16 combi-
nations of the Style options make for hundreds of possible format combinations.

In case you become tired of these combinations, you can visit the Themes drop-down menu on
the Page Layout tab, where many built-in themes are available. Each theme has a new combination of
accent colors, fonts, and shape effects.

To change a document theme, open the Themes drop-down menu on the Page Layout tab. Choose
a new theme, and the colors used in the pivot table change to match the theme.

Caution Changing the theme affects the entire workbook. It changes the colors and fonts
and affects all charts, shapes, tables, and pivot tables on all worksheets of the active work-
book. If you have several other pivot tables in the workbook, changing the theme will apply
new colors to all the pivot tables.

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 Tip Some of the themes use unusual fonts. You can apply the colors from a theme with-
out changing the fonts in your document by using the Colors drop-down menu next to the
Themes menu, as shown in Figure 3-22.

FIGURE 3-22 Choose new colors from the Colors menu.

Case Study: Excel Pivot Table Archaeology

At Microsoft, a great person named Howie Dickerman has been in charge of pivot tables for
the last few years. Howie was an architect of Power Pivot and was always happy to engage
the MVPs when we had some crazy pivot table idea. Occasionally, we would find a pivot
table oddity and Howie would dig in to the code to try to figure out why. He called this Excel
Archaeology. Howie retired in 2021 and his willingness to go deep into the Excel code base
on archaeological expeditions will be missed.

This oddity would have been right up his alley. Excel MVP Wyn Hopkins from Access Ana-
lytic recently uncovered a feature in pivot tables that allows you to quickly apply a border to
several sections inside the pivot table.

Say that you have a pivot table such as the one in Figure 3-23. Leave a blank row and
column on each side of the pivot table, but then completely surround the pivot table with a
border. The border shown in Figure 3-23 has a different style on each side to illustrate how
each side of the border will be translated to the pivot table.

To transfer the outer border to the pivot table, right-click any cell in the pivot table and
choose Refresh. The borders from outside the pivot table are applied to various sections
inside the pivot table.

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 FIGURE 3-23 A relatively plain pivot table, with a border just outside the pivot table.

To transfer the outer border to the pivot table, right-click any cell in the pivot table and choose
Refresh. The borders from outside the pivot table are applied to various sections inside the pivot table.

FIGURE 3-24 The border styles from the outer border are applied to the pivot table.

In a very specific pattern, the border styles used in the outer border are applied throughout
the pivot table. The dashed border used above row 2 is applied above rows 3, 4 and above cell
C11. The dotted border used below row 12 is applied in the pivot table below row 11. A similar
pattern happens with the left border being applied to most vertical lines in the pivot table. The
right border is applied to the right edge of the pivot table.

Why is this feature in Excel? It had to pre-date the Formatting Gallery. It must have been a
way to build your own Pivot Table Styles before there were styles.

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 Changing summary calculations
When you create a pivot table report, by default Excel summarizes the data by either counting or
summing the items. Instead of Sum or Count, you might want to choose functions such as Min, Max, and
Count Numeric. In all, 11 options are available.

The Excel team fixed the Count Of Revenue bug

In early 2018, Microsoft fixed a bug that caused many pivot tables to provide a count of revenue
instead of a sum. If a data column contains all numbers, Excel will default to Sum as the calculation. If a
column contains text, the pivot table will default to Count. But up until 2018, a bug appeared if you had
a mix of numbers and empty cells. An empty cell would cause your pivot table to Count instead of Sum.

One Excel customer wrote a letter to the Excel team describing this bug: “Why are you treating
empty cells as text? Treat them like any other formula would treat them and consider them to be zero.
A mix of numbers and zeroes should not cause a Count of that field.”

Without a single vote on Excel.UserVoice.com, someone on the Excel team patched the bug. If
you have a mix of numbers and blank cells, you will no longer get a Count Of Revenue. This is a nice
improvement.

Changing the calculation in a value field

The Value Field Settings dialog box offers 11 options on the Summarize Values As tab and 15 main
options on the Show Values As tab. The options on the first tab are the basic Sum, Average, Count, Max,
and Min options that are ubiquitous throughout Excel; the 15 options under Show Values As are inter-
esting ones such as % of Total, Running Total, and Ranks.

There are several ways to open the Value Field Settings dialog box:

■■ If you have multiple fields in the Values area, double-click the heading for any value field.

■■ Choose any number in the Values area and click the Field Settings button in the PivotTable
Analyze tab of the ribbon.

■■ In the PivotTable Fields list, open the drop-down menu for any item in the Values area. The last
item will be Value Field Settings.

■■ If you right-click any number in the Values area, you have a choice for Value Field Settings, plus
two additional flyout menus offering six of the eleven choices for Summarize Values By and
most of the choices for Show Values As (see Figure 3-25).

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 The following examples show how to use the various calculation options. To contrast the settings,
you can build a pivot table where you drag the Revenue field to the Values area nine separate times.
Each one shows up as a new column in the pivot table. Over the next several examples, you will see the
settings required for the calculations in each column.

To change the calculation for a field, select one Value cell for the field and click the Field Settings
button on the PivotTable Analyze tab of the ribbon. The Value Field Settings dialog box is similar to the
Field Settings dialog box, but it has two tabs. The first tab, Summarize Values By, contains Sum, Count,
Average, Max, Min, Product, Count Numbers, StdDev, StdDevP, Var, and VarP. You can choose 1 of these 11
calculation options to change the data in the column. In Figure 3-26, columns B through D show vari-
ous settings from the Summarize Values By tab.

FIGURE 3-25 The right-click menu for any number in the Values area offers a flyout menu with the popular
calculation options.

The following examples show how to use the various calculation options. To contrast the settings,
you can build a pivot table where you drag the Revenue field to the Values area nine separate times.
Each one shows up as a new column in the pivot table. Over the next several examples, you will see the
settings required for the calculations in each column.

To change the calculation for a field, select one Value cell for the field and click the Field Settings
button on the PivotTable Analyze tab of the ribbon. The Value Field Settings dialog box is similar to the
Field Settings dialog box, but it has two tabs. The first tab, Summarize Values By, contains Sum, Count,
Average, Max, Min, Product, Count Numbers, StdDev, StdDevP, Var, and VarP. You can choose 1 of these
11 calculation options to change the data in the column. In Figure 3-26, columns B through D show
various settings from the Summarize Values By tab.

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 FIGURE 3-26 Choose from the 11 summary calculations on this tab.

Column B is the default Sum calculation. It shows the total of all records for a given market. Column C
shows the average order for each item by market. Column D shows a count of the records. You can
change the heading to say # Of Orders or # Of Records or whatever is appropriate. Note that the count
is the actual count of records, not the count of distinct items.

Note Counting distinct items has been difficult in pivot tables but is now easier using
PowerPivot. See “Unlocking hidden features with the data model” in Chapter 10 for more
details.

Far more interesting options appear on the Show Values As tab of the Value Field Settings dialog
box, as shown in Figure 3-27. Fifteen options appear in the drop-down. Depending on the option
you choose, you might need to specify either a base field or a base field and a base item. Columns E
through J in Figures 3-26 and 3-27 show some of the calculations possible using Show Values As.

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 Rename field as appropriate

Base Field and Base Item are selectively enabled

FIGURE 3-27 Fifteen different ways to show that data is available on this tab.

Table 3-1 summarizes the Show Values As options.

TABLE 3-1 Calculations in Show Values As

Show Values As Additional Required Description

Information

No Calculation None

% of Grand Total None Shows percentages so all the detail cells in the pivot
table total 100%.

% of Column Total None Shows percentages that total up and down the pivot
table to 100%.

% of Row Total None Shows percentages that total across the pivot table to
100%.

% of Parent Row Total None With multiple row fields, shows a percentage of the par-
ent item’s total row.

% of Parent Column Total None With multiple column fields, shows a percentage of the
parent column’s total.

Index None Calculates the relative importance of items. For an

example, see Figure 3-31.

% of Parent Total Base Field only With multiple row and/or column fields, calculates a
cell’s percentage of the parent item’s total.

Running Total In Base Field only Calculates a running total.

% Running Total In Base Field only Calculates a running total as a percentage of the total.

Rank Smallest to Largest Base Field only Provides a numeric rank, with 1 as the smallest item.

Rank Largest to Smallest Base Field only Provides a numeric rank, with 1 as the largest item.

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 Show Values As Additional Required Description
Information

% of Base Field and Base Item Expresses the values for one item as a percentage of
another item.

Difference From Base Field and Base Item Shows the difference of one item compared to another
item or to the previous item.

% Difference From Base Field and Base Item Shows the percentage difference of one item compared
to another item or to the previous item.

The capability to create custom calculations is another example of the unique flexibility of pivot
table reports. With the Show Values As setting, you can change the calculation for a particular data
field to be based on other cells in the Values area.

The following sections illustrate a number of Show Values As options.

Showing percentage of total

In Figure 3-26, column E shows % Of Total. Jade Miller, with $2.1 million in revenue, represents 31.67%
of the $6.7 million total revenue. Column E uses % Of Column Total on the Show Values As tab. Two
other similar options are % Of Row Total and % Of Grand Total. Choose one of these based on whether
your text fields are going down the report, across the report, or both down and across.

Using % Of to compare one line to another line

The % Of option enables you to compare one item to another item. For example, in the current data
set, Anne was the top sales rep in the previous year. Column F shows everyone’s sales as a percentage
of Anne’s. Cell F7 in Figure 3-28 shows that Jeff’s sales were almost 58% of Anne’s sales.

FIGURE 3-28 This report is created using the % Of option with Anne Troy as the Base Item.

To set up this calculation, choose Show Values As, % Of. For Base Field, choose Rep because this is
the only field in the Rows area. For Base Item, choose Anne Troy. The result is shown in Figure 3-26.

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 Showing rank
Two ranking options are available. Column G in Figure 3-29 shows Rank Largest To Smallest. Jade Miller
is ranked #1, and Sabine Hanschitz is #12. A similar option is Rank Smallest To Largest, which would be
good for the pro golf tour.

FIGURE 3-29 The Rank options will rank ascending or descending.

To set up a rank, choose Value Field Settings, Show Values As, Rank Largest To Smallest. You are
required to choose Base Field. In this example, because Rep is the only row field, it is the selection
under Base Field.

These rank options show that pivot tables have a strange way of dealing with ties. I say strange
because they do not match any of the methods already established by the Excel functions =RANK(),
=RANK.AVG(), and =RANK.EQ(). For example, if the top two markets have a tie, they are both assigned a
rank of 1, and the third market is assigned a rank of 2.

Tracking running total and percentage of running total

Running total calculations are common in reports where you have months running down the column or
when you want to show that the top N customers make up N% of the revenue.

In Figure 3-30, cell I8 shows that the top four sales reps account for 76.97% of the total sales.

Note To produce this figure, you have to use the Sort feature, which is discussed in depth
in Chapter 4, “Grouping, sorting, and filtering pivot data.” To create a similar analysis with
the sample file, go to the drop-down menu in A4 and choose More Sort Options, Descend-
ing, By Total. Also note that the % Change From calculation shown in the next example is not
compatible with sorting.

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 FIGURE 3-30 Show running totals or a running percentage of total.

To specify Running Total In (as shown in Column H) or % Running Total In (Column I), select Field
Settings, Show Values As, Running Total In. You have to specify a Base Field, which in this case is the
Row Field: Rep.

Displaying a change from a previous field

Figure 3-31 shows the % Difference From setting. This calculation requires a Base Field and Base Item.
You could show how each market compares to Anne Troy by specifying Anne Troy as the Base Item.
This would be similar to Figure 3-26, except each market would be shown as a percentage of Anne Troy.

FIGURE 3-31 The % Difference From options enable you to compare each row to the previous or next row.

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 With date fields, it would make sense to use % Difference From and choose (previous) as the base
item. Note that the first cell will not have a calculation because there is no previous date in the pivot table.

Tracking the percentage of a parent item

The legacy % Of Total settings always divides the current item by the grand total. In Figure 3-32, cell E4
says that Chicago is 2.75% of the total data set. A common question at the MrExcel.com message board
is how to calculate Chicago’s revenue as a percentage of the Midwest region total. This was possible
but difficult in older versions of Excel. Starting in Excel 2010, though, Excel added the % Of Parent Row,
% Of Parent Column, and % Of Parent Total options.

FIGURE 3-32 An option in Excel enables you to calculate a percentage of the parent row.

To set up this calculation in Excel, use Field Settings, Show Values As, % Of Parent Row Total. Cell D4
in Figure 3-32 shows that Chicago’s $184,425 is 10.59% of the Midwest total of $1,741,424.

Although it makes sense, the calculation on the subtotal rows might seem confusing. D4:D8 shows
the percentage of each market as compared to the Midwest total. The values in D9, D11, D16, and D19
compare the region total to the grand total. For example, the 31.67% in D11 says that the Northeast
region’s $2.1 million is a little less than a third of the $6.7 million grand total.

Tracking relative importance with the Index option

The final option of the 11 calculations is Index. It creates a somewhat obscure calculation. Microsoft
claims that this calculation describes the relative importance of a cell within a column. In Figure 3-33,
Georgia peaches have an index of 2.55, and California peaches have an index of 0.50. This shows that if
the peach crop is wiped out next year, it will be more devastating to Georgia fruit production than to
California fruit production.

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 FIGURE 3-33 Using the Index function, Excel shows that peach sales are more important in Georgia than in
California.

Here is the exact calculation:

1. First, divide Georgia peaches by the Georgia total. This is 180/210, or 0.857.

2. Next, divide total peach production (285) by total fruit production (847). This shows that
peaches have an importance ratio of 0.336.

3. Now, divide the first ratio by the second ratio: 0.857/0.336.

In Ohio, apples have an index of 4.91, so an apple blight would be bad for the Ohio fruit industry.

I have to admit that, even after writing about this calculation for 10 years, there are parts that I don’t
quite comprehend. What if a state like Hawaii relied on productions of lychees, but lychees were nearly
immaterial to U.S. fruit production? If lychees were half of Hawaii’s fruit production but 0.001 of U.S.
fruit production, the Index calculation would skyrocket to 500.

Adding and removing subtotals

Subtotals are an essential feature of pivot table reporting. Sometimes you might want to suppress the
display of subtotals, and other times you might want to show more than one subtotal per field.

Suppressing subtotals with many row fields

When you have many row fields in a report, subtotals can obscure your view. For example, in Figure 3-34,
there is no need to show subtotals for each market because there is only one sales rep for each market.

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 FIGURE 3-34 Sometimes you do not need subtotals at every level.

If you used the Subtotals drop-down menu on the Design tab, you would turn off all subtotals,
including the Region subtotals and the Market subtotals. The Region subtotals are still providing good
information, so you want to use the Subtotals setting in the Field Settings dialog box. Choose one cell
in the Market column. On the PivotTable Analyze tab, choose Field Settings. Change the Subtotals
setting from Automatic to None (see Figure 3-35).

FIGURE 3-35 Use the Subtotals setting in the Field list to turn off subtotals for one field.

To remove subtotals for the Market field, click the Market field in the bottom section of the
PivotTable Fields list. Select Field Settings. In the Field Settings dialog box, select None under Subtotals,
as shown in Figure 3-33. Alternatively, right-click a cell that contains a Market and remove the check
mark from Subtotal Market.

Adding multiple subtotals for one field

You can add customized subtotals to a row or column label field. Select the Region field in the bottom
of the PivotTable Fields list, and select Field Settings.

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 In the Field Settings dialog box for the Region field, select Custom and then select the types of
subtotals you would like to see. The dialog box in Figure 3-36 shows five custom subtotals selected for
the Region field. It is rare to see pivot tables use this setting. It is not perfect. Note that the count of 211
records in cell D25 automatically gets a currency format like the rest of the column, even though this
is not a dollar figure. Also, the average of $12,333 for South is an average of the detail records, not an
average of the individual market totals.

FIGURE 3-36 By selecting the Custom option in the Subtotals section, you can specify multiple subtotals for
one field.

Tip If you need to calculate the average of the four regions, you can do it with the DAX
formula language and Power Pivot. See Chapter 10.

Formatting one cell is new in Microsoft 365

In the summer of 2018, a new trick appeared for Microsoft 365 customers. You can format a cell in a
pivot table, and the formatting will follow that position.

For example, in Figure 3-37, a white font on dark fill has been applied to Revenue for Doodads sales
to the Software sector.

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 FIGURE 3-37 A new Format Cells option appears in the right-click context menu.

If you rearrange the pivot table, the dark formatting will follow the cell in the pivot table. While cell
B9 was formatted in Figure 3-37, the formatting has moved to D5 in Figure 3-38.

Note that the formatting will persist if you remove the cell due to a filter. If you unselect Software
from the Slicer and then reselect Software, the formatting will return.

However, if you remove Sector, Product, or Revenue from the pivot table, the individual cell format-
ting will be lost.

FIGURE 3-38 Rearrange the pivot table and the formatting moves so that revenue for Doodads sales to the
Software sector stays formatted.

In Figure 3-39, a Customer field has been added as the inner-row field. The dark formatting applied
to Doodads sales of Software is now expanded to C5:C8 to encompass all four customers in this group.
Note that in cell C9, the subtotal for Doodads sold to the Software sector is not formatted.

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 FIGURE 3-39 If you add an inner-row field, the formatting will expand to encompass all customers for Doodads in
the Software sector.

Next steps
Note that the following pivot table customizations are covered in subsequent chapters:

■■ Sorting a pivot table is covered in Chapter 4, “Grouping, sorting, and filtering pivot data.”

■■ Filtering records in a pivot table is covered in Chapter 4.

■■ Grouping daily dates up to months or years is covered in Chapter 4.

■■ Adding new calculated fields is covered in Chapter 5, “Performing calculations in pivot tables.”

■■ Using data visualizations and conditional formatting in a pivot table is covered in Chapter 4.

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 Index

Numerics compare tables using a pivot table, 402–404

create a frequency distribution, 412–413
3D Map, 285
create an automatically expanding data range, 401–402
animating data over time, 294
delete the source data worksheet, 401
bubble charts, 290–291
explode a data set to different tabs, 414–415
column charts
explode a data set to different workbooks, 418–420
building, 288
fill empty cells left by row fields, 396
labeling individual points, 290
implement the Repeat All Item Labels feature, 397
navigating, 289–290
using Go To Special functionality, 398
zooming in and out, 289
force pivot tables to refresh automatically, 390
combining two data sets, 293–294
force two number formats in a pivot table, 407–408
data cards, 293
format individual values in a pivot table, 408–410
fine-tuning, 293
format sections of a pivot table, 410–412
geocoding, 286–287
format your slicers, 432–434
geographic data, 286
pivot field restrictions, 417–418
heat maps, 291–292
pivot table restrictions, 415–417
layers, 288
reducing the size of pivot table reports, 401
preparing data for, 285–286
refresh all pivot tables in a workbook at the same time,
region maps, 291–292
390–391
rendering a video, 295–296
slicer to control data from two different data sets,
settings, 292 428–431
store maps, 296–299 sort data items in a unique order, 391–392
tours, 294–295 sort using custom lists, 392–394
10-BigData.txt, 269, 273–275 turn pivot tables into hard data, 395–396
use defaults to change behavior of all future pivot
tables, 394–395
A use percentage change from previous for year-over-
ActiveX controls, 305 year reports, 420–423
Add function, 356 Alexander, Mike, 432, 495
Add This Data To The Data Model checkbox, 257, 261, 262, Analyze Data feature, 29–30
294 animating data over time, 294–295
hidden features of AutoShow method, 363–365
Distinct Count, 262–264 AutoSort method, 345
including filtered items in totals, 264–265
median calculation, 266–268
reporting text in the values area, 268–269 B
AddFields method, 330–331 backward compatibility
add-ins, 45 pivot table and, 7
Advanced Filter, cross-tabular reports and, 465–467 Timeline slicers and, 36
advanced tips, 389–390 big data
add a rank number field to a pivot table, 399–400 Data Model and, 273–275
AutoFilter a pivot table, 404–406 Power Query and, 269–270

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 blank cells

blank cells, 25 cells

cleaning up, 15–19 blank, 14, 15–16, 25
eliminating, 344–345 eliminating, 344–345
filling, 334, 335 filling, 397–398
implement the Repeat All Item Labels feature, 397 replacing with zeros, 47–48
using Go To Special functionality, 398 cleaning up, 15–19
replacing with zeros, 47–48 formatting, 74–76
borders, 63–64 charts, 149. See also pivot charts
bubble charts, 290–291 bubble, 290–291
bugs, 97 column
alphabetic sequence for months, 277 building in 3D Map, 288
Count of Revenue, 64 labeling individual points, 290
buttons navigating, 289–290
pivot field, 152–153 zooming in and out, 289
removing, 163 cross-filtering, 218–219
pie, 290–291
XY scatter, 165
C check box filter, 90–91
CALCULATE function, 280 cleaning up data, 15–19
calculated fields, 121, 122 Collie, Rob, 143, 229, 435
adding to the data source, 122–123 column charts
creating, 123–124, 125–133 building, 288
data, 357 labeling individual points, 290
inserting in a pivot table, 124–125 navigating, 289–290
measures, 121 Column From Examples, 271–272
rules, 139–145 columns. See also cells; rows
calculated groups, VBA and, 359–360 adding in the Power Pivot grid, 276–277
calculated items, 121–122 adding with Power Query, 271–273
changing the solve order of, 147 changing width of, 58
creating, 134–137 cleaning up, 15–19
GetPivotData function and, 436–439 empty, 14
rules, 145–146 sorting by another column, 277–278
VBA and, 357–359 Columns area, 6
calculated measures, 246–249 combining, datasets in 3D Map, 293–294
calculated members, creating, 249–252 Compact layout, 51–52, 58, 332
calculations, 146, 354–356. See also formulas Fields list and, 77–79
adding to OLAP pivot tables, 245–246 comparing tables using a pivot table, 402–404
cell ranges and, 139 compatibility, 8–9. See also backward compatibility
constants and, 139 complex relationships, 279–280
COUNT function and, 355–356 CONCATENATEX function, 268–269
editing and deleting, 146–147 conceptual filters, 372–375
functions and, 139 conditional formatting, 165–167
median, 266–268 custom rules, 168–173
named ranges and, 139 preprogrammed scenarios for condition levels,
OLAP, 252–253 167–168
referencing totals, 139 removing, 168
Value Field Settings dialog box and, 360–362 connections, Power Query, 202
case sensitivity, functions and, 271

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 dashboards

constants, 131–132, 139 cross-filtering charts, 218–219

controls cross-tabular reports, creating, 465
ActiveX, 305 using Advanced Filter and a data table, 465–466
form, creating a user interface, 304–306 aggregating revenue with DSUM, 468
copying, pivot table values to a new workbook, 347–348 getting a unique list of values, 466–467
cosmetic changes, 44–45 pros and cons of this method, 470
applying a table style to restore gridlines, 45–46 replicating DSUM for each combination of sector
blank lines and, 56 and region, 468–470
changing the number format to add thousands sepa- using Power Query, 473
rators, 46–47 cleaning final steps, 476–477
grand totals and, 57–58 getting your data into Power Query, 473
layout, 50 pros and cons of this method, 477–478
Compact, 51–52, 58 sorting and pivoting, 475–476
Outline, 52–53 summarizing revenue by sector and region, 474
Tabular, 54–56 using three dynamic array formulas, 471
renaming fields, 49–50 filling in the revenue amounts using SUMIF, 472
replacing blanks with zeros, 47–48 getting a unique list of values, 471
styles, 59, 60 pros and cons of this method, 472–473
document themes and, 61–64 CUBEMEMBER function, 228
Value Field Settings dialog box and, 64–68 CUBERANKEDMEMBER function, 229–231
COUNT function, 355–356 cube(s). See also OLAP (Online Analytical Processing)
Count of Revenue bug, 64 formulas, 225
Create PivotTable dialog box, 20–21 converting pivot tables to, 226–233
CreatePivotTable method, 330 functions, 243–245
creating offline, creating, 240–243
calculated fields, 123–124, 125–133 CUBESET function, 229
calculated items, 134–137 CUBEVALUE formula, 227–228
calculated members, 249–252 custom lists, 87–89, 392–394
cross-tabular reports Custom Lists dialog box, 87–89
using Advanced Filter and a data table, 465–470 customization
using Power Query, 473–478 cosmetic changes
using three dynamic array formulas, 471–473 applying a table style to restore gridlines, 45–46
custom conditions, 168–173 blank lines, 56
drill-down hierarchy, 219–220 changing the layout, 50, 51–53, 54–56, 58
frequency distributions, 412–413 changing the number format to add thousands
hierarchies, 117–120 separators, 46–47
macros, with Power Query, 310–320. See also macros; document themes, 61–64
VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) grand totals and, 57–58
new pivot cache, 38–39 renaming fields, 49–50
offline cube, 240–243 replacing blanks with zeros, 47–48
pivot charts, 150–152, 153–154 styles, 59, 60
pivot tables, 19–22 summary calculations, 64
from the Data Model, 278, 282–283 Value Field Settings dialog box and, 64–68
using Excel Online, 455–458
relationships, 259–260, 276, 380–381
slicers, 31–34 D
Timeline slicer, 34–36 Dalgleish, Debra, 45
visualizations, 213–218 dashboards, 207

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 Data Model

Data Model, 176, 225, 226, 257, 379. See also Add This deleting
DataTo The Data Model checkbox calculations, 146–147
adding tables to, 379–380 data from pivot tables, 335
linked tables, 275–276 pivot table(s), 162
new tables, 180 dialog boxes
big data and, 273–275 Create PivotTable, 20–21
building out your first, 176–179 Custom Lists, 87–89
creating a pivot table from, 278, 282–283 Grouping, 107–111
defining the pivot cache, 381 Insert Slicers, 31
Distinct Count, 262–264 Macro, 309
Excel Online and, 462 Manage Relationships, 179–180
limitations of, 180 Measure, 266–267
model fields, adding to the pivot table, 381 Modify Slicer, 433
numeric fields, adding to the Values area, 381–382 Move PivotTable, 41
overcoming limitations of, 281–282 Record Macro, 302
Power Pivot and, 257 Report Connections, 33
primary key, 177–178 Select Table, 183
relationships Sort, 84–85. See also sorting
creating, 259–260, 380–381 Value Field Settings, 64–68
managing, 179–180 adding and removing subtotals, 72–74
replacing VLOOKUP with, 257–261 displaying a change from a previous field, 70–71
unlocking hidden features with, 261–262 Index option, 71–72
VBA and, 382–384 running total calculations, 69–70
data ranges, automatically expanding, 401–402 Show Values As tab, 360–362
data source(s), 11, 479–481. See also external data sources showing percentage of total, 68
adding calculated fields to, 122–123 showing rank, 69
cleaning up, 15–19 tracking the percentage of a parent item, 71
deleting, 401 using % Of to compare one line to another line, 68
external, building a pivot table using, 180–181 Dickerman, Howie, 456
Microsoft Access, building a pivot table using, 181–184 dimensions, 2266
Power Query and, 202 disparate data sources, 175. See also Data Model; data
preparing source(s)
applying formatting to fields, 14 docking the Fields list, 79
avoid repeating groups as columns, 13–14 document themes, 61–64
eliminating gaps and blank cells, 14 dragging and dropping, 26–27
ensuring the data is in Tabular layout, 12, 14–15 drill-down hierarchy, creating, 219–220
section headings, 12–13 DSUM function, 468–470
preparing for 3D Map, 285–286 Dynamic Arrays, 495
transposing, 202–204 dynamic reports, creating with GetPivotData
updating, 37 build the shell report, 446–447
database centric layout, 12 create a pivot table, 443–446
Date filters, 97–98. See also timelines populate the shell report, 448–451
dates, summarizing, 342–344 updating the report in future months, 451–452
DAX (Data Analysis Expressions), 121, 144, 145
CALCULATE function, 280
median calculation, 266–268 E
deferring updates, 40–41 editing, calculations, 146–147
Excel, versions, 328–329

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 formatting

Excel Online, 384, 453, 462 filter(s), 89–90. See also slicers
Data Model and, 462 Advanced, 465–467
Google Sheets and, 453 check box, 90–91
Home screen, 454–455 conceptual, 372–375
icons, 458–459 Data, 404–406
pivot tables Date, 97–98
creating, 455–458 fields, 367
layouts, 459–461 including filtered items in totals, 264–265
PivotTable Settings task pane, 459 label, 93–94
Alt Text, 461–462 pivot table report, 28
options, 461 report, 100–102
signing in, 454–455 for row and column fields, 90
executive overviews, creating in VBA, 363–365 search, 375–376
exploding a data set search box, 92
to different tabs, 414–415 setting up in VBA, 367
to different workbooks, 418–420 slicers, 102–104
external data sources controlling data from two different data sets,
building a pivot table using, 180–181 428–431
Microsoft Access, building a pivot table using, 181–184 driving multiple pivot tables from, 105–107
Power Query and, 187–188 formatting, 432–434
SQL, building a pivot table using, 184–187 Timeline, 104–105, 159–160
VBA and, 376–379
timelines, 104–105
F value, 94–95
fields. See also cells Top 10, 95–97, 264
adding to a pivot table report, 22 VBA and, 371–372
adding to Filters area, 99 Filters area, 6–7, 99
calculated. See calculated fields adding fields to, 99
date, grouping, 111–112 choosing items from, 99–100
dragging and dropping, 26–27 fine-tuning, 3D Map, 293
filter, 367 form controls
formatting, 14 creating a user interface, 304–306
geographic, 287 scrollbar, 307–310
grouping, 107–111 formatting
pivot chart, 154–156 cells, 74–76
rank number, adding to a pivot table, 399–400 conditional, 165–167
renaming, 49–50 custom rules, 168–173
Fields list, 77–79, 132–133 preprogrammed scenarios for condition levels,
Areas section, 81–82 167–168
docking and undocking, 79 numbers
minimizing, 80 adding thousands separator, 46–47
OLAP pivot tables, 238, 239 default, changing, 345–346
rearranging, 80–81 pivot charts, 156
sorting pivot tables, 332–334
high-to-low, 82–85 sections of a pivot table, 410–412
manual, 85–87 slicers, 432–434
FILTER function, 233 values, 408–410
VBA and, 348

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 formulas

formulas, 129 turning off, 439–440

calculated items, 135–137 Google Sheets, Excel Online and, 453
creating a calculated field, 123–124 grand totals. See totals, 57–58
cube, 225 gridlines, adding to pivot tables, 45–46
converting pivot tables to, 226–233 Group method, 343–344
CUBEVALUE, 227–228 grouping
documenting, 148 date fields, 111–112
referencing totals, 139 by months, 113
frequency distribution, creating with a pivot table, by week, 113–114
412–413 numeric fields, 107–111
functions, 139
Add, 356
CALCULATE, 280 H
case sensitivity, 271 hard data, turning pivot tables into, 395–396
CONCATENATEX, 268–269 headings, source data and, 479–481
COUNT, 355–356 heat maps, 291–292
cube, 243–245 hierarchies, 234, 238
CUBEMEMBER, 228 creating, 117–120
CUBERANKEDMEMBER, 229–231 drill-down, 219–220
CUBESET, 229 high-to-low sorting, 82–85
DSUM, 468–470 Hopkins, Wyn, 453
FILTER, 233
GetPivotData, 164, 226, 435–436, 441–442.
See also GetPivotData I
avoiding, 439 icon(s)
calculated items and, 436–439 Column From Examples, 271–272
speculation on, 440–441 Excel Online, 458–459
turning off, 439–440 slicer, 104
MAKEARRAY, 231–233 importing
Sum, 336, 354 data into Power BI, 208–209
SUMIFS, 472 visualizations, 221–222
time intelligence, 280–281 Index function, 71–72
VLOOKUP, 206, 423–428 Insert Slicers dialog box, 31
replacing with the Data Model, 257–261 inserting, scrollbar form control, 307–310

G J-K-L
geocoding, 286–287 joining two data sets, 425–428
geographic data, 286 label filters, 93–94
GetPivotData function, 164, 226, 435–436, 441–442 laying out a pivot table report, 23–25
avoiding, 439 layout
building dynamic reports Compact, 51–52, 58, 77–79, 332
build the shell report, 446–447 customizing, 50
creating a pivot table, 443–446 for Excel Online, 459–461
populate the shell report, 448–451 Outline, 52–53
updating the report in future months, 451–452 Tabular, 54–56, 332, 342
calculated items and, 436–439 levels, 238
speculation on, 440–441 lookup tables, 258–260

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 Outline layout

M Microsoft Access data, building a pivot table using,

181–184
M programming language minimizing, Fields list, 80
code, viewing, 195–196 mobile phones, designing reports for, 222–223
Power Query ribbon and, 483 Modify Slicer dialog box, 433
Macro dialog box, 309 Move PivotTable dialog box, 41
macros, 301–302, 324–325. See also VBA (Visual Basic for
Applications)
adding functionality, 306–307 N
creating a user interface, 304–306 Nadella, Satya, 453
creating with Power Query, 310–320 named ranges, 139
Power Query and, 273 naming, pivot tables, 34
recording, 302–303 numbers. See also values
RefreshData, 303 adding thousands separator, 46–47
security and, 303 changing the default format, 345–346
TopNthCusts, 306, 308–309 Count of Revenue bug, 64
TypeScript, 385–387 forcing two format types in a pivot table, 407–408
VBA code, 309–310 grand totals, 57–58
workbooks and, 323 grouping, 107–111
MAKEARRAY function, 231–233 replacing blanks with zeros, 47–48
Manage Relationships dialog box, 179–180 running total calculations, 69–70
manual sorting, 85–87 subtotals, 72–74
mapping tools. See 3D Map summary calculations, 64
Market slicer, 105
MDX (multidimensional expressions), 245–246
Measure dialog box, 266–267 O
measures, 121, 145, 239, 266–268, 381 object variables, 327
calculated, 246–249 object-oriented code, 325
median calculation, 266–268 offline cube, creating, 240–243
members, 238, 249–252 OLAP (Online Analytical Processing), 234
memory calculated measures, 246–249
Excel performance and, 282 calculated members, creating, 249–252
pivot cache, 7 calculations, managing, 252–253
sharing, 38–39 cube(s)
starting from scratch and, 41 connecting to, 235–237
roll-ups, 107 functions, 243–245
Merge Columns command, 486–488 offline, creating, 240–243
Merge queries, 425–428 structure of, 238–239
methods, 325 MDX and, 245–246
AddFields, 330–331 pivot tables
AutoShow, 363–365 adding calculations to, 245–246
AutoSort, 345 limitations of, 240
CreatePivotTable, 330 performing what-if analysis, 253–254
Group, 343–344 transactional databases and, 234
PivotFilters.Add, 372–373 operators, order of precedence, 138
ShowPages, 368 order of operator precedence, 138
SlicerCache, 377 Outline layout, 52–53

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 Photoshop

P Columns area, 6
conditional formatting, 165–167
Photoshop, 296–299
converting to cube formulas, 226–233
pie charts, 290–291
converting to values, 337–340
pivot cache, 7, 8
creating, 19–22
formatting, 156
from the Data Model, 278, 282–283
refreshing, 7
using Excel Online, 455–458
sharing, 38–39
using TypeScript, 384–387
starting from scratch and, 41
data source(s), updating, 37–38
VBA and, 381
default settings, 43, 394–395
pivot charts, 149–150
deleting, 162
alternatives to using, 160–161
deleting data from, 335
delete the underlying pivot table, 162
Distinct Count, 262–264
distribute a picture of the pivot chart, 162–163
filling blank cells
turn the pivot table into hard values, 161–162
in the data area, 334
use cells linked back to the pivot table as the data
in the row area, 335
source, 163–165
filter fields, 367
creating, 150–152, 153–154
Filters area, 6–7, 99
fields, placement, 154–156
adding fields to, 99
pivot field buttons, 152–153
choosing items from, 99–100
pivot tables and, 154
formatting
reports and, 157–159
selecting different areas, 410–412
pivot field buttons, 152–153
with VBA, 332–334
pivot table reports, 1. See also reports
formulas, 129
creating a filter, 28
calculated items, 135–137
fields, adding, 22
creating a calculated field, 123–124
laying out, 23–25
documenting, 148
macros, 301–302. See also macros
gridlines, adding, 45–46
adding functionality, 306–307
including filtered items in totals, 264–265
recording, 302–303
layout
pivot table(s). See also advanced tips; data source(s); VBA
(Visual Basic for Applications) Compact, 51–52, 58
adding layers to, 25 Outline, 52–53
backward compatibility, 7 Tabular, 54–56
borders, 63–64 limitations, 8
building from external data sources, 180–181 naming, 34
building with VBA, 329–331 OLAP
adding fields to the data area, 331–332 adding calculations to, 245–246
calculated fields limitations of, 240
creating, 125–133 performing what-if analysis, 253–254
inserting, 124–125 pivot charts and, 154
rules, 139–145 preparing the data
calculated items applying formatting to fields, 14
creating, 134–137 avoid repeating groups as columns, 13–14
rules, 145–146 eliminating gaps and blank cells, 14
calculations, 146 ensuring the data is in Tabular layout, 12, 14–15
cell ranges and, 139 section headings, 12–13
editing and deleting, 146–147 producing a static summary from, 338–340
named ranges and, 139 rearranging, 25–27
order of operations, 138 reasons for using, 2–3

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 Report Connections dialog box

relocating, 41 table-level actions, 200–201

restrictions, 417–418 transposing a data set, 202–204
Rows area, 5 two-way VLOOKUPs, 423–428
turning into hard data, 395–396 Unpivot command, 481–484
Values area, 4–5 unpivoting from a delimited cell to new rows,
adding numeric fields, 381–382 492–494
allowing multiple fields in, 352–354 unpivoting from two rows of headings, 484–491
reporting hidden text in, 268–269 viewing M code, 195–196
when to use, 3–4 preparing data sources
PivotFilters.Add method, 372–373 applying formatting to fields, 14
PivotLayout object, 150 avoid repeating groups as columns, 13–14
Power BI eliminating gaps and blank cells, 14
cross-filtering charts, 218–219 ensuring the data is in Tabular layout, 12, 14–15
defining synonyms in, 213 section headings and, 12–13
designing for the mobile phone, 222–223 primary key, 177–178. See also Data Model
drill-down hierarchy, creating, 219–220 product line manager reports, 349–352
Fields panel, 209 publishing, to Power BI, 222, 223–224
importing data to, 208–209
preparing data in, 211–212
preparing data in Excel, 208
Q-R
queries
publishing to, 222, 223–224
Merge, 425–428
views, 210
natural language, 213
visualizations
rank number field, adding to a pivot table, 399–400
building, 213–218
rearranging
importing, 221–222
Fields list, 80–81
Visualizations panel, 209
pivot tables, 25–27
Power BI Desktop, 207–208
Recommended PivotTable feature, 28–30
Power Pivot, 257, 282. See also Data Model
Record Macro dialog box, 302
adding calculated columns in the grid, 276–277
recording macros, 302–303, 324–325, 385–387
Data Model and, 257
RefreshData macro, 303
Diagram View, 276
refreshing
time intelligence functions, 280–281
all pivot tables in a workbook, 390–391
Power Query, 187–188, 204–206, 495
automatically, 390
adding a new column, 271–273
data sources, 37–38
applied steps, 193–196
pivot cache, 7
cleaning up data, 15–19
Power Query data, 196
Column From Examples, 314–315
region maps, 291–292
column-level actions, 198–200
relationships, 211–212, 234. See also Data Model
connection types, 202
complex, 279–280
creating a macro, 310–320
creating, 259–260, 276, 380–381
cross-tabular reports, creating, 473–478
relocating, pivot tables, 41
macros and, 273
removing
Merge Columns command, 486–488
blank cells, 344–345
processing big data, 269–270
conditional formatting, 168
queries
data sources, 401
managing, 196–198
subtotals, 396
web, 188–193
renaming, fields, 49–50
Query Editor window, 190
Report Connections dialog box, 33
refreshing data, 196

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 report filter

report filter, 100–102 creating, 31–34

reports driving multiple pivot tables from, 105–107
cross-tabular, creating, 465 formatting, 432–434
using Advanced Filter and a data table, 465–470 icon, 104
using Power Query, 473–478 Market, 105
using three dynamic array formulas, 471–473 Timeline, 34–36, 104–105, 159–160
designing for the mobile phone, 222–223 VBA and, 376–379
dynamic, creating with GetPivotData smartphones, designing reports for, 222–223
build the shell report, 446–447 solve order of calculated items, 147
create a pivot table, 443–446 Sort dialog box, 84–85. See also sorting
populate the shell report, 448–451 sorting
updating the report in future months, 451–452 columns, 277–278
pivot charts and, 157–159 high-to-low, 82–85
product line manager, 349–352 manual, 85–87
reducing the size of, 401 in a unique order, 391–392
retrieving top three customer details, 366–367 using a custom list, 87–89, 392–394
showing revenue by category, 340–342 source data. See also data source(s)
top 5 customers by region, 369–371 headings and, 479–481
Top 5 Markets, 363–365 spreadsheets, 11
year-over-year, 114–116, 420–423 SQL Server data, building a pivot table using, 184–187
revenue, showing by category, 340–342 styles, 59
roll-ups, 107 applying, 45–46
rows. See also cells customizing, 60
cleaning up, 15–19 subtotals, 72–74, 348–349
empty, 14, 15–16 formatting, 348
Rows area, 5 removing, 396
rules suppressing for multiple row fields, 346
for calculated field, 139–145 Sum function, 336, 354
for calculated items, 145–146 SUMIFS function, 472
for conditional formatting, 168–173 summary calculations, 64
synonyms, defining in Power BI, 213

S
scrollbar form control, inserting, 307–310 T
search box, filtering and, 92 tables. See also relationships
search filter, 375–376 adding to the Data Model, 180, 275–276
section headings, 12–13 comparing using a pivot table, 402–404
security, macros and, 303 relationships, creating, 259–260
Select Table dialog box, 183 Tabular layout, 12, 14–15, 54–56, 332
settings, 3D Map, 292 Excel Online and, 459–461
sharing, pivot cache, 38–39 totals and, 332
Show Report Filter Pages feature, 414–415 VBA and, 342
ShowDetail property, filtering recordsets with, 365–367 themes, 61–64
ShowPages method, 368 time intelligence, 280–281
signing in to Excel Online, 454–455 Timeline slicer, 159–160
SlicerCache method, 377 backward compatibility and, 36
slicers, 7, 31, 102–104 creating, 34–36
controlling data from two different data sets, timelines, 104–105
428–431 tools, Visual Basic, 324

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 VBA (Visual Basic for Applications)

top 5 customers by region report, 369–371 values

Top 5 Markets report, 363–365 constants, 131–132, 139
Top 10 filter, 95–97 converting a pivot table to, 337–340
TopNthCusts macro, 306, 308–309 filter, 94–95, 264
totals. See also subtotals formatting, 408–410
controlling, 336–337 Values area, 4–5
including filtered items in, 264–265 adding numeric fields, 381–382
referencing, 139 allowing multiple fields in, 352–354
rolling daily dates up to years, 342–344 format individual values in, 408–410
showing revenue by category, 340–342 reporting hidden text in, 268–269
Tabular layout and, 332 VBA (Visual Basic for Applications), 321. See also
tours, 294–295. See also 3D Map advanced tips
transactional databases, OLAP and, 234 Add function, 356
transposing a data set, 202–204 adding subtotals to get page breaks, 348–349
trusted locations, 303 AutoShow method, 363–365
turning off GetPivotData, 439–440 calculated data fields, 357
two-way VLOOKUPs, 423–428 calculated groups, 359–360
TypeScript, creating pivot tables with, 384–387. See also calculated items, 357–359
VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) calculation options, 360–362
changing the default number format, 345–346
conceptual filters, 372–375
U creating worksheets for each region or model, 367–371
undocking the Fields list, 79 Data Model, 379, 382–384
Unpivot command, 481–484 adding model fields to the pivot table, 381
unpivoting from a delimited cell to new rows, adding numeric fields to the Values area, 381–382
492–494
adding tables to, 379–380
unpivoting from two rows of headings, 484–491
creating a relationship between two tables,
updating 380–381
data ranges, 401–402 defining the pivot cache, 381
data sources, 37–38 enabling, 322
deferring, 40–41 End With statement, 328
reports, 451–452 exploding a data set to different workbooks, 418–420
user interface, creating for macros, 304–306 filtering a recordset with ShowDetail property,
365–367
handling final formatting, 348
V macro recorder, 324–325
Value Field Settings dialog box, 64–68. See also manually filtering two or more items in a pivot field,
calculations 371–372
adding and removing subtotals, 72–74 measures, 381
displaying a change from a previous field, 70–71 methods
Index option, 71–72 AddFields, 330–331
running total calculations, 69–70 AutoSort, 345
Show Values As tab, 360–362 CreatePivotTable, 330
showing percentage of total, 68 Group, 343–344
showing rank, 69 PivotFilters.Add, 372–373
tracking the percentage of a parent item, 71 ShowPages, 368
using % Of to compare one line to another line, 68 SlicerCache, 377

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object variables, 327 tools, 324

object-oriented code, 325 totals, controlling, 336–337
pivot field restrictions, 417–418 writing code to handle any data range, 325–327
pivot tables versions, 328–329
adding fields to the data area, 331–332 videos, rendering in 3D Map, 295–296
building, 329–331 Visual Basic Editor, 309–310, 323–324
converting to values, 337–340 visualizations, 209–210
copying as values to a new workbook, 347–348 creating, 213–218
eliminating blank cells, 344–345 importing into Power BI, 221–222
filling blank cells in the data area, 334 VLOOKUP function, 206, 423–428
filling blank cells in the row area, 335 replacing with the Data Model, 257–261
formatting, 332–334
limitations of, 334
multiple value fields, 352–354 W
preventing errors from inserting or deleting cells, web queries, 188–193
335 what-if analysis, 253–254
restrictions, 415–417 workbooks, 326
product line manager reports, 349–352 enabling macros, 323
properties, 325 exploding a datasets to different, 418–420
rolling daily dates up to years, 342–344 pasting pivot table values in, 347–348
search filter and, 375–376
Set keyword, 327
slicers and, 376–379 X-Y-Z
With statement, 328 XY scatter charts, 165
suppressing subtotals for multiple row fields, 346 year-over-year reports, 420–423
Tabular layout and, 342 creating, 114–116
zooming in and out, 3D Map, 289

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