Hi Eric,

I understand your frustration with the pivot table not recognizing your alpha codes as text. However, there is a solution to this problem.

When you create a pivot table, Excel automatically tries to determine the data type of each column. In your case, it is recognizing the column with the alpha codes as numeric data because it contains numbers as well. To fix this, you can force Excel to recognize the column as text by adding a single quote (') before each alpha code.

Here's how to do it:

1. In your source spreadsheet, insert a new column next to the column with the alpha codes.
2. In the first cell of the new column, type the formula
   Formula:

   = "'"&A1 

   (assuming your alpha codes are in column A). This will add a single quote before the alpha code in cell A1.
3. Copy the formula down the entire column to apply it to all the alpha codes.
4. Use the new column with the single quotes as the data source for your pivot table instead of the original column.

Now, when you create your pivot table, Excel will recognize the column with the single quotes as text and will display the alpha codes as is.