Excel 2010 Pivot Table Calculated Item Strings

[Jack45]

Is there a way to create a calculated field from two text strings and a literal?

I have "LastName", "FirstName" as fields in the Excel 2010 database and wish to have a "Names" field that will display "Smith, John", for example. I thought that since there is a place for a formula that I could enter ='LastName' & ", " & 'FirstName" and up would pop the concatenated field. Not so.

Instead, I get the message that it can't swallow multiple fields. This seems like such a desirable thing to be able to do that I'm surprised that Microsoft doesn't have a way of allowing the user to create a concatenated field on the fly. Am I missing something? Is there a work-around?

Thanks!

 

[cyrilbrd]

Hi,

Just a question, why don't you create a helper column and use the concatenate there instead of in the pivot?

 

[Jack45]

Primarily, I liked the idea of the calculated field, since in theory it didn't require fussing around with the original database. Yes, I could certainly create another column, but I was trying to keep things simple.