Setting Default PivotTable settings in Excel

Microsoft’s latest update to Excel now allows you to set defaults for how you want your PivotTables formatted. As someone who builds PivotTables all the time & 98% of the time want them setup the same way – this is a huge help!

To access the default options, open Excel and go to: File > Options > Data > & click on the Edit Default Layout button.

If you have an existing PivotTable that’s setup the way you want, simply use the Layout Import option at the top of the window to select the existing PivotTable and import the options all ready set.

The options I have set are:

• Subtotals: Do Not Show Subtotals
• Grand Totals: On for Rows and Columns
• Report Layout: Show in Tabular Form
• repeat All Item Labels: Checked box

In addition, click the PivotTable Options button and you can optimize all your PivotTables moving forward (huge file size saver!).

Select the Data tab and select/unselect the following options:

• Save source data with file: Unchecked
• Enable show details: Checked
• Refresh data when opening the file: Checked
• Number of items to retain per field: Select the None option

This will force excel to refresh the PivotTable every time the file is opened but it will also not save the source data (calculations behind the PivotTable) which makes the file size much smaller & less susceptible to file corruption.

Enjoy!
~Yosef

Excel PivotTable Slicer Options Explained

Microsoft has a great tutorial on how to use slicers to filter PivotTable data and I don’t feel that I need to duplicate their tutorial here. You can read all about it here: Microsoft: Use slicers to filter PivotTable data

What the article does not cover is the Slicer settings available by right-clicking on a slicer and selecting that bottom option “Slicer Settings”.

There are 3 main settings that you can set here – I typically only change the last one and leave the rest on their default settings. They are:

1. Name – this is the name by which you can refer to the slicer in formulas. I typically just let this be the default. (e.g. CUBERANKEDMEMBER("PowerPivot Data",Slicer_Name,ROW()))
2. Header – this is the name displayed above the slicer. You can choose to turn it on or off and customize the name if needed. Again, I typically just leave the header visible with the default name.
3. Item Sorting and Filtering – Here’s where you can choose to:
• order the values ascending or descending
• Perhaps most important for visual aesthetics (and the value I typically choose to modify most often) you may hide items with no data
• Choose to visually indicate items with no data (by making them more transparent)
• Choose to show items, which have no data associated with them, last in the list
• Continue to show items which have been deleted from the original data source table

Questions? Suggestions? Leave a comment!

How to Hide Pivot Chart Filters

(Directions below are for Excel 2010)

I recently built a simple dashboard using pivot tables with corresponding pivot charts. I was asked by my client if I could remove the filters from the pivot charts so that they would have a cleaner look for presenting. I had never worried about this before and didn’t know how off the top of my head so I did a couple of quick Google searches & couldn’t find any references on how to hide the filters! I was very surprised that I couldn’t find anyone else asking the question so I thought I would share how to easily do this. Luckily it’s pretty simple – I just didn’t realize these options existed!

Here’s a Pivot chart with the usual filters visible:

To remove these filters, click the “Field Buttons” (or drop down for more control) button on the Analyze tab of the PivotChart Tools section of the menu ribbon (only visible if the chart is selected):

You can then choose which (if any) filters to display so that your chart looks nice & clean:

Hope this helps!

~Yosef B.