Sometimes xl doesn't want to let go of the thought that there's non-dates in
that column.

If I have non-dates and then fixed them, I can drag the date field off the pt,
refresh the pt, and drag the field back.

It's worked in the past--I don't recall if it's 100% effective, though. But it
just worked again when I tried it.

And I'd try this to verify that you really have dates.
=counta(yourrangewithdates)
=count(yourrangewithdates)

if you get different values returned, then one of those entries is masquerading
as a date.

And both numbers should be the total number of cells in that range.

One more thought about your range for the pt. Did you include extra rows to
grow into?

If yes, then those blanks will cause the trouble. You can sometimes avoid that
resizing ranges by using a dynamic range name for your source.

Debra Dalgleish has instructions at:
http://www.contextures.com/xlNames01.html#Dynamic

Andy M wrote:

Thanks Dave, I have checked this as well and tried many means of converting
to assure they are all dates. No luck yet.

Andy

"Dave Peterson" wrote:

When I get this message, it's because I have a non-date in that column. It
could be text or an empty cell. Both of these will cause the problem you
describe.

Andy M wrote:

Hi All,

Although I am generally comfortable with Pivot tables I frequently run into
a problem grouping date ranges within the pivot table. Sometimes this works
fine and other times excel says that it cannot group that data. There is some
mention of this in the help however it does not suggest how to fix it. It
seems that it has to do with the date format from the original list however I
have tried reformatting and it seems to not help.

Has anyone ever figured this out? Some date ranges work fine and other
don't. Thanks for any help that you can offer.

--

Dave Peterson


--

Dave Peterson