Friends and supporters of Chandoo.org,
I am very happy to tell you about another great way to learn Excel & stay awesome
Chandoo.org podcast
That is right. As part our mission to make you awesome in Excel, this year I will be adding a podcast.
A podcast eh? Why?
Let me tell you a story first. One of my goals for 2014 is to increase my stamina. So on Jan 1st of 2014, I opened Nike + app on my iPhone, went to coach feature and selected “Run 10K” as my first goal. It has been 3 years since I ran 10k. So I wanted to get back in the game to improve my fitness and health. The app suggested an 8 week program to help me reach 10k. It sounded difficult, as I had to run more than 250 KM in 8 weeks. But I pushed on. As of today, I am at 177. I know I missed a few days here and there, but I already ran 10K thrice since starting and I feel good about where I am today.
Dude… what are you talking about? I am here to know about the podcast!
I am coming to that. To give me company during the runs, I choose a bunch of podcasts. This is the first time in my life I paid serious attention to podcasts. It is a fruitful experience. Every time I go for a jog, not only I am getting healthier, but also smarter. I realized how powerful, effective and useful podcasting can be. So I thought, “Why not provide similar experience to our readers?”
And thus born the idea of Chandoo.org Podcast.
How will the podcast help you?
I am still at the drawing board when it comes to our show. But here is what you will gain,
- Strategies & tactics: You will learn about various spreadsheet design strategies, tactics, tricks and ideas I follow. You will learn how to handle tricky situations (like lots of data, changing requirements, dynamic everything, no vba etc.).
- Whats new: What is happening the world of spreadsheets, data analysis, visualization, reporting & self-service BI. My views & opinions mixed with latest industry trends.
- Tips & Tricks: Excel tips, tricks, ideas that are easy to remember and quick to implement.
- Interviews: Interviews with fellow Excel gurus, bloggers, MVPs and authors. Hopefully we get to feature Microsoft Excel team members, industry leaders and other prominent figures.
- Case studies & Personal experiences: Explanations on projects, things I am learning and how to manage large-scale spreadsheet development projects.
- Book & Product Reviews: I read a lot of books on data analysis. I also come across quite a few add-ins, templates, Excel courses. My views and recommendations on the same so that you can make informed decisions.
- Ask Chandoo: Send me your questions. I will answer them in the podcast.
- Announcements: Announcements about my upcoming training programs, live classes or products so that you can make the best use of them.
When is it launching?
In the first week of May. I will share more details once we are ready to go. Few more things:
- It is free and awesome. Just like our articles, tutorials & examples.
- You can subscribe to it thru iTunes, Zune or other popular pod-casting directories.
- You can also listen to it from our site.
- Full episodes, show notes, resources and downloadable templates will be posted on our site.
- I am hoping to do a show once every 2 weeks. Lets see how this goes.
What should we call it?
If all of this sounds interesting, here is how you can help.
I am still not sure what to call this podcast. I have a few options for the name. Can you suggest one?
The names I am thinking are,
- Awesome.xls
- Speaking Cells
- Become Awesome Analyst Podcast
- Chandoo.org Podcast
Can you tell me which one should I use? Post your choice in the comments.
PS: If you don’t like any of these names, suggest some.
23 Responses to “Displaying Text Values in Pivot Tables without VBA”
Its possible to display up to 4 text values.
Have a look at the screen shot of an example that I had posted way back at the EHA and figure out how its done !
http://tinypic.com/r/muzywk/6
With Excel 2010 you can use Conditional Formatting to apply custom number formats which can display text. (In older versions you can only modify text color and cell background color, but not number formats.) Using CF allows for an even larger number of different display values.
[...] Display text values in Pivot Tables without VBA [...]
Hey,
Thanks, this helps. But how do you do it for multiple values where there is a huge amount of non repeating text?
@Soumya
The only way to do more than 4 values is to make the Pivot Table manually with formulas, of course then it isn't a Pivot table
You can of course do it with VBA
You may want to have a look at this description of how to do it here: http://www.clearlyandsimply.com/clearly_and_simply/2011/06/emulate-excel-pivot-tables-with-texts-in-the-value-area-using-vba.html
@Soumya
The only way to do more than 4 values is to make the Pivot Table manually with formulas, of course then it isn’t a Pivot table
You can of course do it with VBA
You may want to have a look at this description of how to do it here: http://www.clearlyandsimply.com/clearly_and_simply/2011/06/emulate-excel-pivot-tables-with-texts-in-the-value-area-using-vba.html
[...] Pivot Tables take tables of data and allow the user to summarise and consolidate the data at the same time. This is a great and very fast method of analysis but is restricted to handling mathematical functions on the value field resulting in numerical summaries. – read more [...]
[…] Read more here: Displaying Text Values in Pivot Tables without VBA […]
There is a very good way actually for handling text inside values area.
First you create a special column on the very left side and call it ID, and put unique ID (numbers only), and then create a pivot table with:
Row Labels and Column labels as you like, and in the Values labels use the unique ID number.
Move the unique ID number (copy paste) somewhere to the right and use vlookup to load the data you need using the ID as reference.
It is a bit longer way but for me it works perfectly to combine values as you like in any moment.
hope helps.
Regards,
Jon
Thank you! I finally understand pivot tables thanks to your clear, concise explanations and examples.
Good Day. This is exactly what i have been looking for. However when i try it on my pivot table or even when i try to recreate this exercise using the sample worksheet, i get this error:
"Microsoft Excel cannot use the number format you typed. Try using one of the built-in number formats."
Same thing here, Excel quite did not like the format in my PowerPivot. Any clues as to what may be going on? Thanks.
I have the same thing happening on my end. I'm running a normal pivot table on a .xlsm file.
@Danzi
What format did you use?
can you post the file ?
pls. help in table there is name, pan. amount. i have to make pivot table for example
NAME PAN AMOUNT
MR.X AAAAC1254T 500.00
MR.Y AAABR1258C
MR.A CFVDE2458T
MR.Z AAVCR12548C
MR.X AAAAC1254T
MR.Z AADCD245T
pls. help in table there is name, pan. amount. i have to make pivot table for example
NAME PAN AMOUNT
MR.X AAAAC1254T 500.00
MR.Y AAABR1258C 1000
MR.A CFVDE2458T 2000
MR.Z AAVCR12548C 5451
MR.X AAAAC1254T 45564
MR.Z AADCD245T 4500
how to get pivot tabe so i get PAN no. against Name.
I found an easy way to get text values in pivot table.
I create an other worksheet in wich each cell has a formula that copy the pivot table. The trick is that the formula does a lookup for the numbers in the pivot table.
The formula looks like that:
=IF(ISNUMBER(table!A1);VLOOKUP(table!A1;Code!$A$1:$B$65;2);IF(ISBLANK(table!A1);" ";table!A1))
Code is a worksheet where there is a liste of text /numbers correspondance.
As a bonus The new sheet is easier to format
Additional trick:
In my case, i encoded differents codeid with a power(2, codeId-1) so that summing then is equivalent to concatenate them.
1-A
2-B
4-C
8-D
yields :
5 - AC
14 - BCD
Hi
I want to ask if pivot can display dates in pivot field. As in a column i have customers and in row different items i want to know there last purchase date. anyone help in this??
Hello Guys, Need your help
I am doing some analysis of the cycle time of the product i.e how much time a product takes from manufacturing to the central warehouse.
I have batch numbers for the product and against them i have to pull out the diff. dates
Like the base date is from where the manufacturing start. So i have the batch number,against it's manuf. date. Now i have to pull out the date when it was quality released.
I have the quality released data but the data have duplicates, like i will have two dates or may be three for the same batch. So my main objective is to pull out the date which is latest among them.
BATCH NO. DATE of Mfg. DATE of Quality release
A1 12/4/2014 (HERE I HAVE TO PULL value)
Next Sheet
BATCH NO. DATE of Quality Release
A1 14/5/2014
a2 23/5/2016
A1 12/5/2014
A1 13/6/2014
From this sheet i have to pull up the latest date format of date here is dd/mm/yyy
TIA
[…] needed to present text instead of counts in a pivot table value column. Here is an excellent resource for Excel manipulation, in addition to an overview of pivot […]
This is great thank you.
Wow!!! Excellent!! It helped me a lot.
I am developing training tracking sheet for 200 employees with training completed date. Each employee will be attending 25 courses. How to indicate actual dates in pivot table value field.