PIVOTCHART ANNOYANCES

PIVOTCHARTS AND PIVOTTABLES GO TOGETHER LIKE ...

The Annoyance:

I frequently use PivotTables to summarize my data, but my boss likes to see charts. He says he finds my lack of graphics...disturbing. I looked through Excel 97, which I have on my home computer, but when I selected the PivotTable and created a graph, the graph didn’t change when I manipulated the PivotTable. Am I stuck creating a chart for each interesting PivotTable configuration?

The Fix:

PivotCharts were introduced in Excel 2000, so as long as you have that version or later, you can create a PivotChart when you create your PivotTable. You do have to create a PivotTable, though—it’s what the PivotChart relies on for its data. The only difference in the procedure is that you click the PivotChart Report (with PivotTable Report) radio button on the first page of the PivotTable Wizard. (In Excel 2000, it’s the PivotChart (with PivotTable) radio button.) Then you create the PivotTable as you usually would, and after you click Finish, Excel creates both the PivotTable and the PivotChart. A sample PivotChart appears in Figure 5-19.

This PivotChart represents the dynamic data that forms its base.

Figure 5-21. This PivotChart represents the dynamic data that forms its base.

As with a PivotTable, you can use the filter arrows on the field headers to limit the data that appears in your chart, which is a lot of help when you have a few hundred rows of data and a lot ...

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