Pivot Table Design Options

Overview

Excel provides several layout and style options to make pivot table more visually appealing.

Layout options control:

• Subtotals placement
• Grand Totals usage
• Report Layout controls whether fields exist in separate columns, or multiple fields exist on one single column, and allows you to insert blank rows.
• Blank Rows allow you to Insert blank lines after each item

Style options are tools that add color and banding:

• The body of the pivot table
• For row and column headers

Subtotals

Use the option in the PivotTable Design Ribbon to set subtotals globally:

You can view subtotals for just one of the fields by right clicking in any cell in a particular column.

Grand Totals

This example shows grand totals for columns. (You should turn them off for Financial Summary Reports):

Report Layout

There are three options for Report Layout. But the two most commonly used are:

• Tabular Form
• Compact Form

They are accessed from the Design Tab - which is only available if your cursor sits within a pivot table.

Tabular Form

This option keeps fields in separate columns, appropriate for QQube detailed data models.

Compact Form

This option "compacts" multiple fields in the SAME column and is more conducive for the QQube Financial Summary Reports.

Style Options

We have noted several common options e.g. bold column headers, and banded rows.