Pivot Table weaknesses

[Ken Merson]

Have only just come back to Mac as a business tool and today I found a
major weakness in MS Excel X compared with the equivalent in PC.

I am beginning to believe my colleagues when they tell me that Macs &
PC's are just not compatible, skills on one system are not
transferable.

For example; Have run Pivot Tables on PCs with out any issue,
analysing lines and lines of data. Decided to try and do the same work
now using the Mac and Office X Excel.

It is a classic Excel spreadsheet of companies, areas, sales etc. But
creating a Pivot Table in Excel X is just not the same and in fact
when you have created the supposed table, you can't even sort the data
as you can in PC.

Even in Mactopia webpage example, the same result is seen, which I
suppose is fine if you are limited to two locations of information to
process.

Why can't it be the same as PC and if I'm using this system correctly,
then the advertising needs to change, because it is false.

Look forward to hearing from someone.

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi

AFAIK pivot tables work the same in Excel X and Excel for Windows except
that Excel for Mac does not support OLAP cubes.

I tried to find a "how to" article on MacTopia that involves pivot tables
but could not. I checked here:
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/excelx/using.aspx?pid=usingexcelx

Which article are you referring to?

-Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

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[Eric Swanson]

I have had similar problems with Pivot Tables.

I have written down a procedure (directions) to make a Pivot Table. When I
follow my directions on the PC version of Excel it works, but when I do the
exact same thing on the Mac version of Excel (SP 1), I get some error like
'too many items in table' or something on the Mac. Quite annoying, forces
me to use a PC for this task.

Eric S

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi Eric,

Such a tease! It sure is hard to see what you have written from here. Care
to share what steps you took with the world?

-Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

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Thanks.

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----------

 

[Eric Swanson]

Sure.

I have setup a call accounting system within Excel. I capture data from my
company's phone system and once a month create several reports in Excel for
billing purposes.

My Excel workbook has 11 worksheets. For our purposes, the "Master Log"
worksheet is what we are concerned about (it contains the monthly data from
the phone switch). For my October report, this sheet had 10684 rows and 29
columns.

Here are the directions how I make a PivotTable:

How to Create the Full Report (Master Log is the current worksheet)
1. Select all columns (not select all) then do Right-Click/Unhide.
2. Select all.
3. Click Data/Pivot Table.
4. Take defaults (MS Excel List, Pivot Table), Click Next.
5. Default ($A:$AC), Click Next.
6. New Worksheet
7. Click Layout button.

Rows >>>>NOTE: These are columns on the Master Log sheet.
1. Department (Advanced/Sort ascending, Layout/Page Break After, Auto
Subtotal). .>>>>NOTE: Page Break After not available on the Mac, or at least
not found!
2. Name (Advanced/Sort ascending, Auto Subtotal).
3. Number Called (Advanced/Sort ascending, NO SUBTOTAL).
4. Charge (Advanced/No sort‹manual, Auto Subtotal).

Data >>>>>Note: Percent is also a column on Master Log sheet.
1. Sum of Percent (Number/Percentage 4 decimal places).
2. Click Finish.

Mac gives error: Microsoft Excel cannot make this change because there are
too many row or column items. Drag at least one row or column field off the
PivotTable, or to the page position.

====

My PivotTable has 4 items in the row section and 1 item in the data section.

I do not get the error when I do the above on a PC.

I don't understand the error message when it says "or to the page position"
at the end.

Any ideas?

Eric Swanson