PivotTable VII: – Conditional formatting gets even better, or visualizing your data in PivotTables

re: PivotTable VII: – Conditional formatting gets even better, or visualizing your data in PivotTables

Tommy — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 16:05:49 GMT

Compliments to the Excel-team. Apparently, you have given my favourite Excel-tool a terrific makeover. I have been sold on pivot tables right from the start, and as a local spreadsheet trainer I have always urged co-workers to explore this powerful feature. Still, I often find that people, while initially impressed, don't get around to using it in their day-to-day work. I think much of that will change with the enhanced functionality and the new, appealing UI.

re: PivotTable VII: – Conditional formatting gets even better, or visualizing your data in PivotTables

Tianwei — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 17:51:16 GMT

David, this is getting better and better. I do have one request to conditional formatting in general: visualization is great yet can be less meaningful once you have a lot of similar values (in your case mountain 48 and road 52 have similar values) it would be hard for eyes to tell. So here is my suggestion: provide another option that allow a floating rank (ascending or descending by user choice) of say, top 100 values. So mountain 48 will have a yellowish floating tag stating "#5", raod 52 has a tag stating "#4", or something like that. User would have some choices to rank up to 500, say, but can reduce ranking tags to top 10, top 5 etc.

re: PivotTable VII: – Conditional formatting gets even better, or visualizing your data in PivotTables

Roy — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 19:53:14 GMT

Love it!

re: PivotTable VII: – Conditional formatting gets even better, or visualizing your data in PivotTables

David Gainer — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 21:47:43 GMT

Thanks for the feedback, folks. Tianwei, thanks for the suggestion. You could use some of the conditional formatting rules we have added to do approximately what you are interested in, but we don't have one rule that does exactly that in v12.

re: PivotTable VII: – Conditional formatting gets even better, or visualizing your data in PivotTables

Murray — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 22:06:09 GMT

I like it. In the version I use (Excel 10), when the pivot table columns get rearranged (e.g. adding or removing fields), I have to manually readjust the column widths to accomodate the new data. Will Excel 12 do this for me automatically?

re: PivotTable VII: – Conditional formatting gets even better, or visualizing your data in PivotTables

Harlan Grove — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 23:36:30 GMT

Tommy...
...
|I have always urged co-workers to explore this
|powerful feature. Still, I often find that
|people, while initially impressed, don't get
|around to using it in their day-to-day work.
...

Depends on why one uses spreadsheets. The sine qua non of spreadsheets is automatic recalc. Pivot tables don't provide that, though the functionality could be implemented in VBA using the Calculate event handler to refresh pivot tables. However, if there are any GETPIVOTDATA calls, that approach could lead to circular recalc issues.

Pivot tables may be analytical tools, but they're more database tools than spreadsheet tools. Your co-workers may place higher importance on automatic recalc than ease of implementation or layout. If so, they'd be unlikely to change in Excel 12. But there'll always be people who (mis)use spreadsheets, including Excel, to produce reports, and Excel 12 may make it more attractive to do so.

re: PivotTable VII: – Conditional formatting gets even better, or visualizing your data in PivotTables

Jean Martineau — Sat, 24 Dec 2005 06:46:32 GMT

Great work.

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Office 12: ?????????? ?????????????? | ???????????????????? ?????????? — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 00:28:49 GMT

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