Getting Great Results with Excel Pivot Tables, PowerQuery and PowerPivot

CHAPTER 5Making the Pivot Table More Visual with Charts

At the end of Chapter 4, “Sorting and Filtering the Pivot Table,” we added slicers and timelines to a pivot table to make it more visual and interactive. Another great way to help visualize the pivot table is by representing the pivot table with a chart. One of Excel's great features is the ability to create a chart from a range of data. A chart can also come from a pivot table.

There's the old saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” In Excel, a chart can tell the story of the data much quicker than analyzing the data itself. In this chapter, you will learn how to create a chart from a pivot table, how to manage the chart, and how to make the chart look better. It will also cover other popular topics about charts. A chart that comes from a pivot table is also called a PivotChart, so the terms chart and PivotChart will be used interchangeably in this chapter.

When a chart comes from a pivot table, the pivot table is the data source for the chart. If the pivot table changes, the chart will change, and if the chart changes, the pivot table will change. They are linked to each other. A pivot table can have as many charts as you need. Even if you move a chart for a pivot table to a different sheet, the pivot table and the chart are still linked to each other; if one changes, the other also changes.

In this chapter, you will learn how to create a column chart, a pie chart, and a combo chart, all with a pivot table as ...