Updates to Pivot Tables

Time-saving improvements

If you have the latest Excel version or the subscription version, you may have noticed some refreshing improvements to PivotTables.

Defaulting to COUNT

In the old days (like a couple of years ago) if you had a single blank cell in a value field then the PivotTable would default to COUNT instead of SUM – this was frustrating but not a major issue as it is easy to change. The recent updates have made PivotTable more forgiving and COUNT is now less likely to be used on value fields.

Automatic grouping of date fields

In the old days (again, a couple of years ago) when you dragged a date field that had daily data into the column or row section you had to use grouping to summarise by months and or years. Now when you add a date field it will automatically apply month and year grouping to the report.

If you haven’t seen these updates you most likely have Excel 2013 or earlier.

Excel 2019 was released in September 2018 and the subscription version – Office 365 – receives regular updates between the major version updates.

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