Excel Tips


Show Yes/No in a Pivot Table »

December 12, 2022

I want to show Yes/No values in a pivot table. If the customer bought from us in a period, show Yes. If there were no sales, show No.


Preserve Column Widths »

December 9, 2022

I’ve nicely formatted my pivot table, including using narrow column widths.


Specify a Number Format for a Pivot Table Field »

December 7, 2022

In a pivot table, a Values field tends to appear in a General format. This doesn’t always work for me. I might want thousands separators or even to show numbers in thousands.


Collapse and Expand Pivot Fields »

December 6, 2022

I will be using a pivot table projected on a screen during a sales forecasting meeting. I need pivot tables that show products by region, but sometimes I need to see the customer detail for a product.


Replace Blanks in a Pivot Table with Zeros »

December 5, 2022

When I have no sales of a particular product in a particular region, Excel leaves those cells in the pivot table blank. This seems like a really bad idea.


Create a Flattened Pivot Table for Reuse »

December 2, 2022

Why would they put three different kinds of information in column A? Doesn’t this make pivot tables as silly as the person who created the bad data set back in “Add a Customer Number to Each Detail Record”?


Convert Your Data to a Table Before Adding Records »

December 1, 2022

I have 100 new records to paste below the original data that is in the pivot table. How do I do that?


Why do I Get a Count Instead of a Sum? »

November 30, 2022

When I choose Revenue, it goes to the Rows instead of the Values area. When I drag Revenue to the Values area, it defaults to a Count instead of a Sum. As of 05/2018, this has been fixed in Office 365!


Update Data Behind a Pivot Table »

November 29, 2022

I’ve discovered that some of the underlying data in my pivot table is wrong. After I correct a number, the pivot table does not appear to include the change.