Is it possible to FORCE a pivot table to keep old data?

[Shadovv]

I have read a number of posts about changing the "retain items deleted from the data source" setting. This may work well for getting rid of the old data, but it setting it to Automatic or Max does not seem to FORCE the pivot table to keep old data.

I am looking for a non-macro, mostly-automatic way to keep a historical summary of monthly data, or at least to keep the previous month's data. If I can force a pivot table to keep the previous data and add whatever comes in from the Data Source, this would be a perfect solution.

Example data (and pivot table source); the Month and Sales values (row 2) would be formulas:
[TABLE="class: grid, width: 200"]
<tbody>[TR]
[TD]Month
[/TD]
[TD]Sales
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Dec[/TD]
[TD]100
[/TD]
[/TR]
</tbody>[/TABLE]

Desired results:
[TABLE="class: grid, width: 200"]
<tbody>[TR]
[TD]Month
[/TD]
[TD]Sales
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Oct
[/TD]
[TD]75
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Nov
[/TD]
[TD]85
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Dec
[/TD]
[TD]100
[/TD]
[/TR]
</tbody>[/TABLE]

Is there any way to accomplish this without using macros or copy/paste? I am open to other solutions, but am most interested in turning what seems like a bug in the way pivot tables work into a useful tool. References to how this "feature" is supposed to work would be helpful, as I have not found any yet. Thanks in advance!

 

[j_unsuitable]

Hey
Just add the new data below the existing data and dont replace it. How is excel supposed to know which data is still relevant?
Thats not a bug in Excel but in your bookkeeping
The "retain items deleted from the data source" isnt connected to values, but only to row and column headers.

Julian

 

[Shadovv]

Hi Julian,

Thank you for the reply. Your last sentence explains the part I have been missing.
It still seems to me that a pivot table keeping row/column headers that don't actually exist in the data should be considered a bug. What would be the intended use for this "feature"?
Regarding which data is relevant, I was simply hoping the pivot table would continue to accumulate all new rows every time the values in the Data Source changed. Sure, this could get out of hand quickly, if using a large data source, but I just wanted to add a single row per month.

Apparently, the only solutions will be: 1) copy/paste or 2) write a macro. I was hoping to avoid both.

Thanks again and have a great day!
-Shadhi