I've played with the sorting and the filtering, and so far the Pivot table is
working well, I just have to figure out which piece of data goes where (I
used to be able to do this fairly well... so much for the riding a bike
analogy!).

The last piece that's eluding me is comparing apples and oranges - Value Big
/monthly/ totals.

I have my complete data table sorted first by Value Big then by Date. I've
totaled the withdrawals by month in another column called Monthly Totals.
[Side note - if I ever re-sort or play with my data table, those columns will
be useless until I sort back into Value-Date order! Is there a better way of
doing that?]

Beside THAT column I have one called "Value Totals" which is the sum of all
the dates for a particular Value Big - June, July, and August Food expenses,
for example. Beyond that column is one last Total Total column that adds up
everything I've spent over the entire time period, regardless of category or
value.

My last effort this evening is trying to get all my Monthly Totals to show
up in the Pivot. I haven't yet figured out how to get an "August Total" and a
"June Total" and so on for each Big or Small value. I just get a listing of
every date that had a transaction over the month. I feel like I want the Row
Field to be the words of each month (no idea how to accomplish that), the
Column Field to be the Monthly Totals but that leaves no Data Items??

Maybe I need to try Link Cells and create a separate Sheet for abbreviated
data to pull a Pivot from?

"Del Cotter" wrote:

On Wed, 22 Aug 2007, in microsoft.public.excel.charting,
That70sHeidi said:
Assigning the additional 'descriptor' values to my vendors doesnt really
link the data together, it just provides a way for me to sort and stare at
the data.

It looks as though you have sorting sorted, but you can't show just the
items you want. Have you looked at AutoFilter? That should let you
select one field by clicking on the value in that field, and the graph
should then show only what's filtered in (if you've got that option set
in Options)

Pivot Charts will also do some things, but you must be sure to have your
data sorted so that the fields are vertical columns with the field names
at the top in some distinctive format, (which it sounds like you've
already achieved if your sorting is good)

I can't seee your problem, which is a shame as you've framed your
question so well and comprehensively.

--
Del Cotter
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