fbpx
Search
Close this search box.

Selective Sub-totals in Pivot Tables [Quick Tip]

Share

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn

Recently I was creating a pivot report with multiple items in row labels area. I had to show sub-totals, but only for one of the fields. Something like this:

selective-subtotals-excel-pivots

How to show selective sub-totals in Pivot Tables

First instinct suggests that using Design ribbon > Sub-totals we can tell pivot table how we want the sub-totals.But this is like a master switch. It will turn off or on all sub-totals in the report. What we need is sub-totals only at one level of the report (in this case, sub-totals by department, but not by month).

The answer is simple.

  1. Click on any month label. This will select all months in the row label area.
  2. Right click > Field settings (you can also access this from Analyze Ribbon > Field Settings)
  3. In the “Subtotals & Filters” tab, choose “None”
  4. You are done.

disabling-subtotals-for-field
Happy Pivoting. I am off to a short spin on my cycle before heading to work.

Click here for more pivot table tips & tricks.

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn

Share this tip with your colleagues

Excel and Power BI tips - Chandoo.org Newsletter

Get FREE Excel + Power BI Tips

Simple, fun and useful emails, once per week.

Learn & be awesome.

Welcome to Chandoo.org

Thank you so much for visiting. My aim is to make you awesome in Excel & Power BI. I do this by sharing videos, tips, examples and downloads on this website. There are more than 1,000 pages with all things Excel, Power BI, Dashboards & VBA here. Go ahead and spend few minutes to be AWESOME.

Read my storyFREE Excel tips book

Overall I learned a lot and I thought you did a great job of explaining how to do things. This will definitely elevate my reporting in the future.
Rebekah S
Reporting Analyst
Excel formula list - 100+ examples and howto guide for you

From simple to complex, there is a formula for every occasion. Check out the list now.

Calendars, invoices, trackers and much more. All free, fun and fantastic.

Advanced Pivot Table tricks

Power Query, Data model, DAX, Filters, Slicers, Conditional formats and beautiful charts. It's all here.

Still on fence about Power BI? In this getting started guide, learn what is Power BI, how to get it and how to create your first report from scratch.

7 Responses to “Selective Sub-totals in Pivot Tables [Quick Tip]”

  1. sonitcell says:

    Found another way, just right click on any month label and then de-select Subtotal.

  2. Mark says:

    very comoon action for me - I use the "None" for subtotals more often than not with pivot tables- it's a pity that there isn't a way to enable it as the default setting. Also find that the field/row behaviour for applying this is different (in Excel 2010) between the non-classic and classic pivot modes when this is applied, so I always revert back to classic to retain the field names. Of course I may be missing something that the non-classic mode can do ...

  3. Manoj says:

    Hi Chandoo,

    I have a question. I have last name and first name in this format i.e. Negi, Sonu M then rest details are right below them like

    Negi, Sonu M
    Sharma, Soniya F

    I want to correct the format like Mr. Sonu Sharma and Mrs. Soniya Sharma according to their gender respectively. Please suggest.

    • Mark says:

      Hi Manoj,
      I dont believe pivot tables have any decision making ability in the filter/subtotal functions to do such such a change of row level information. You would have to add Gender and Title fields into you data to do what your asking, and/or create a calculated field.
      Hope that helps!
      Cheers

  4. Shailesh Chaudhary says:

    How i can Learn Excel Basic? with Suitable example

  5. Nayan says:

    I work on pivots daily and wanted to know if there exist a solution to count number of entries for each month. On back of above example other than sub total I want to know that it relates to 3 individual , in June it relates to 1 and in July 4

Leave a Reply