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Changing a PivotTable in Microsoft Excel 2013

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Changing a PivotTable in Microsoft Excel 2013: Video

This video shows changing a PivotTable in Excel 2013. Click here to view the complete tutorial

Changing a PivotTable in Microsoft Excel 2013: Overview

This lesson shows you ways to alter a PivotTable to change what data is displayed and calculated within the PivotTable. As was seen in the last lesson, you can check and uncheck the fields shown in the “Choose fields to add to report:” list within the “PivotTable Field List” task pane to show or hide their display in the PivotTable. Once the fields have been added to any one of the four quadrants shown at the bottom of the task pane, you may click and drag the fields shown in these areas from one quadrant to another to rearrange the display of the data, if needed.

When working with the fields in your PivotTable, note that if you click into a worksheet cell outside of the PivotTable area, the PivotTable will become de-selected and the “PivotTable Field List” will be hidden. You can simply click back into a cell within the PivotTable to reactivate the PivotTable and display the “PivotTable Field List” again.

You can also filter what information is displayed within each of the columns and rows. Notice that each time that you add fields to the PivotTable, the field will appear with a small drop-down arrow to the right of the field name within the actual PivotTable. You can click this drop-down arrow to show a menu listing all of the unique values within that column or row. Values that are checked will display in the PivotTable and values that are unchecked will be hidden from the PivotTable. You can check and uncheck the values in each column or row, as needed, to display just the data that you want to see. When you are finished checking and unchecking value items in the drop-down menu, click “OK” at the bottom to set your filter choices. Note that you can select the “(Select All)” option at the top of the manual filter list to select all values in the field for display once again.

You can also make use of the buttons shown in the “Options” and “Design” tabs of the “PivotTable Tools” contextual tab within the Ribbon to change the appearance of your PivotTable data. The “Expand Entire Field” and “Collapse Entire Field” buttons in the “Active Field” group on the “Options” tab can be used to collapse and expand the detail data for any selected field in an outlined group. In this same group, you can click the “Field Settings” button to open a dialog box where you can change the settings of the currently selected field within the PivotTable.

Also, if you need to enable the display of the “Field List” for any reason, you can click the “Field List” button in the “Show” group on the “Options” tab to show and hide the “PivotTable Field List” in the program.

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