Alternative for pivot table

[Shweta]

Hi All,

Can anybody please help me out!

My boss is fed up of pivot tables. He wants to change the data presentation style for all his reports.

Is there anything else that can be used in place of pivot tables?

Thanks in advance!

Regards,
Shweta

 

[jeffreybrown]

Sure, but it won't be as simple as a pivot table and the beauty of the pivot table you can quickly change on the fly.

Tell the boss you need to use the most appropriate tool and that is the pivot table.

 

[Shweta]

Thanks Jeffreybrown!

I would like to know what is that can subsitute pivot tables? I am not aware of about it.
So I want to know just to add on my knowledge.

shweta

 

[jeffreybrown]

I'm afraid this is not something you can just do.

It depends on many things.

What does the data look like now?
What does it need to look like for the reports?
What is the best formula to use...could be a myriad of different formulas?
Will it require VBA?

And BTW, IMO, there is no real substitute for the dynamic nature of the pivot table. You can develop very extravagent formulas to get the right setup/answer or you can use VBA code, but again, the pivot table is very versatile. But again, this is only my opinion.

I found the other day I was going to go a route which meant not using a pivot table, but after about 20 minutes of frustrating myself, I quickly summarized the data with a pivot table in less than a minute.

 

[Fazza]

MS Access reports are great

 

[Shweta]

Ok I got it.

Thanks

Shweta

 

[Fazza]

Another thought. With some work on the formatting, pivot table reports can look more like database reports. Via field settings, layout, show items in outline form. And colour formatting of headers/totals.

 

[DataAnalyst]

I googled this topic because I've been futzing around with the same pivot table all morning. My boss would not be happy if he knew how much time this is taking.
I got Office 2013 a couple of months ago and one of the new features is, the file locks up if I scroll while a pivot table is selected.
Usually it's not as bad as today though. It hangs when I open it and I have to try several times. It hangs for minutes at a time with each filter or formatting click.
I've worked with IT and PC experts in the past and they have not been able to find a cause for this. They say I have more than enough memory and processing power for what I'm doing.
I tried to add the missing row borders (should have known better) and now it looks bad and it's locked up and hung when I tried to remove them.
Twice I forgot to de-select the pivot before scrolling and it locked up, and I had to try a few times to re-open it.
Once it locked up and I had to use task manager to close and re-open it (in this version of Windows task manager doesn't give you the option to end task, only to re-start the app or do nothing).
After it recovered the file I continued working in it without realizing it was a different file, and when I tried to save it under the old name it wouldn't let me.
I'm trying a new thing of making macros to do the formatting the pivot table won't hold for each report, and it's losing even more formatting than usual. One of the macros I made didn't work when I used the keystroke.
Wouldn't it be nice if there was a program that would give us the convenience of pivot tables without all this crap! Please, anyone but microsoft, step up...