I have a date field in my pivot table, for which source data not only has the
year, but also the time. When I get it into the pivot table, however, there
is no way I can figure out to get it to show me (both in the dropdown for
selection of range or in display of the labels) the date with the year. As
such, because the data spans several years, it's hard to guess which dates to
include and eliminate in order to capture any particular month of a
particular year. Any clues? I know I have no blanks in there, which
sometimes throws date fields off. I know my source is formatted to date
format. I don't have any other ideas of what to try.

Thanks for any help.
--
Boris

If your dates are real dates, you could rightclick on the Date field (In the
pivottable) and choose "Group and show detail".

Then you could group my month (or month and year).

Another option might be to use another column of formulas:

=text(a2,"yyyy-mm")

And use that in the pivottable.

BorisS wrote:

I have a date field in my pivot table, for which source data not only has the
year, but also the time. When I get it into the pivot table, however, there
is no way I can figure out to get it to show me (both in the dropdown for
selection of range or in display of the labels) the date with the year. As
such, because the data spans several years, it's hard to guess which dates to
include and eliminate in order to capture any particular month of a
particular year. Any clues? I know I have no blanks in there, which
sometimes throws date fields off. I know my source is formatted to date
format. I don't have any other ideas of what to try.

Thanks for any help.
--
Boris

--

Dave Peterson

Dave, the second idea is certainly something that would work (is my guess),
but I like to avoid adding columns, especially given I'm already pushing 8k
records with lots of data (the file is getting monstrous on its own without
additional columns, and I'd have to do this several times to fix other dates
if I were to do it that way).

On your first point, I am not quite clear...I am assuming the litmus test
for "real dates" is whether the grouping dialogue comes up (because it
doesn't even do that if you have a blank, much less something that is not a
date). I do get that dialogue. As for "group and show detail" I am not sure
where that is. I have group and I have show detail, but given that the date
is the only field I have in the row area, "show detail" would require me to
pick a "detail" field to show, which I don't really need to do. I guess I am
miffed by why Excel chooses - with all the date data points I have in the
source data and formatting (day, month, year, time) - to only show me the
options of day and month on the pivot (without my having chosen for it to do
that in the first place). Am I making sense as to why I am not understanding
your first idea?
--
Boris


"Dave Peterson" wrote:

If your dates are real dates, you could rightclick on the Date field (In the
pivottable) and choose "Group and show detail".

Then you could group my month (or month and year).

Another option might be to use another column of formulas:

=text(a2,"yyyy-mm")

And use that in the pivottable.

BorisS wrote:

I have a date field in my pivot table, for which source data not only has the
year, but also the time. When I get it into the pivot table, however, there
is no way I can figure out to get it to show me (both in the dropdown for
selection of range or in display of the labels) the date with the year. As
such, because the data spans several years, it's hard to guess which dates to
include and eliminate in order to capture any particular month of a
particular year. Any clues? I know I have no blanks in there, which
sometimes throws date fields off. I know my source is formatted to date
format. I don't have any other ideas of what to try.

Thanks for any help.
--
Boris

--

Dave Peterson

"Group and show detail" is an option when I click on that field in xl2003.

I'm not sure if they changed this caption from earlier versions (but they have
changed a bunch of captions through various versions).

Try Group and see where that leads.

ps. Post the version of excel, then someone with that same version can jump in
if you have trouble.

BorisS wrote:

Dave, the second idea is certainly something that would work (is my guess),
but I like to avoid adding columns, especially given I'm already pushing 8k
records with lots of data (the file is getting monstrous on its own without
additional columns, and I'd have to do this several times to fix other dates
if I were to do it that way).

On your first point, I am not quite clear...I am assuming the litmus test
for "real dates" is whether the grouping dialogue comes up (because it
doesn't even do that if you have a blank, much less something that is not a
date). I do get that dialogue. As for "group and show detail" I am not sure
where that is. I have group and I have show detail, but given that the date
is the only field I have in the row area, "show detail" would require me to
pick a "detail" field to show, which I don't really need to do. I guess I am
miffed by why Excel chooses - with all the date data points I have in the
source data and formatting (day, month, year, time) - to only show me the
options of day and month on the pivot (without my having chosen for it to do
that in the first place). Am I making sense as to why I am not understanding
your first idea?
--
Boris

"Dave Peterson" wrote:

If your dates are real dates, you could rightclick on the Date field (In the
pivottable) and choose "Group and show detail".

Then you could group my month (or month and year).

Another option might be to use another column of formulas:

=text(a2,"yyyy-mm")

And use that in the pivottable.

BorisS wrote:

I have a date field in my pivot table, for which source data not only has the
year, but also the time. When I get it into the pivot table, however, there
is no way I can figure out to get it to show me (both in the dropdown for
selection of range or in display of the labels) the date with the year. As
such, because the data spans several years, it's hard to guess which dates to
include and eliminate in order to capture any particular month of a
particular year. Any clues? I know I have no blanks in there, which
sometimes throws date fields off. I know my source is formatted to date
format. I don't have any other ideas of what to try.

Thanks for any help.
--
Boris

--

Dave Peterson


--

Dave Peterson

well I am also on 2003, SP2.

I see what you're saying now. The level before actual useful dialogues is
called "group and show details". I know the dialogue you're referring to
where you can group by the details of the dates, and I know it can only do
that because what I said originally is true (in that they are all dates). My
problem is that I don't want to have to have three fields (year, month, day)
or even two (mmm-dd and year) to show what's combined within one cell. I
guess what I'm asking is whether this is one of those quirks of pvts, in that
despite the data being dates, and the grouping being able to group the dates
into labels, there is still some inability to treat the labels as date
formats as well.
--
Boris


"Dave Peterson" wrote:

"Group and show detail" is an option when I click on that field in xl2003.

I'm not sure if they changed this caption from earlier versions (but they have
changed a bunch of captions through various versions).

Try Group and see where that leads.

ps. Post the version of excel, then someone with that same version can jump in
if you have trouble.

BorisS wrote:

Dave, the second idea is certainly something that would work (is my guess),
but I like to avoid adding columns, especially given I'm already pushing 8k
records with lots of data (the file is getting monstrous on its own without
additional columns, and I'd have to do this several times to fix other dates
if I were to do it that way).

On your first point, I am not quite clear...I am assuming the litmus test
for "real dates" is whether the grouping dialogue comes up (because it
doesn't even do that if you have a blank, much less something that is not a
date). I do get that dialogue. As for "group and show detail" I am not sure
where that is. I have group and I have show detail, but given that the date
is the only field I have in the row area, "show detail" would require me to
pick a "detail" field to show, which I don't really need to do. I guess I am
miffed by why Excel chooses - with all the date data points I have in the
source data and formatting (day, month, year, time) - to only show me the
options of day and month on the pivot (without my having chosen for it to do
that in the first place). Am I making sense as to why I am not understanding
your first idea?
--
Boris

"Dave Peterson" wrote:

If your dates are real dates, you could rightclick on the Date field (In the
pivottable) and choose "Group and show detail".

Then you could group my month (or month and year).

Another option might be to use another column of formulas:

=text(a2,"yyyy-mm")

And use that in the pivottable.

BorisS wrote:

I have a date field in my pivot table, for which source data not only has the
year, but also the time. When I get it into the pivot table, however, there
is no way I can figure out to get it to show me (both in the dropdown for
selection of range or in display of the labels) the date with the year. As
such, because the data spans several years, it's hard to guess which dates to
include and eliminate in order to capture any particular month of a
particular year. Any clues? I know I have no blanks in there, which
sometimes throws date fields off. I know my source is formatted to date
format. I don't have any other ideas of what to try.

Thanks for any help.
--
Boris

--

Dave Peterson


--

Dave Peterson

I thought that if you kept the date/times in your pivot table, then you could
group that by year and month.

Aren't the dates/times just in one column in the raw data?

But it sounds like I don't understand the problem.



BorisS wrote:

well I am also on 2003, SP2.

I see what you're saying now. The level before actual useful dialogues is
called "group and show details". I know the dialogue you're referring to
where you can group by the details of the dates, and I know it can only do
that because what I said originally is true (in that they are all dates). My
problem is that I don't want to have to have three fields (year, month, day)
or even two (mmm-dd and year) to show what's combined within one cell. I
guess what I'm asking is whether this is one of those quirks of pvts, in that
despite the data being dates, and the grouping being able to group the dates
into labels, there is still some inability to treat the labels as date
formats as well.
--
Boris

"Dave Peterson" wrote:

"Group and show detail" is an option when I click on that field in xl2003.

I'm not sure if they changed this caption from earlier versions (but they have
changed a bunch of captions through various versions).

Try Group and see where that leads.

ps. Post the version of excel, then someone with that same version can jump in
if you have trouble.

BorisS wrote:

Dave, the second idea is certainly something that would work (is my guess),
but I like to avoid adding columns, especially given I'm already pushing 8k
records with lots of data (the file is getting monstrous on its own without
additional columns, and I'd have to do this several times to fix other dates
if I were to do it that way).

On your first point, I am not quite clear...I am assuming the litmus test
for "real dates" is whether the grouping dialogue comes up (because it
doesn't even do that if you have a blank, much less something that is not a
date). I do get that dialogue. As for "group and show detail" I am not sure
where that is. I have group and I have show detail, but given that the date
is the only field I have in the row area, "show detail" would require me to
pick a "detail" field to show, which I don't really need to do. I guess I am
miffed by why Excel chooses - with all the date data points I have in the
source data and formatting (day, month, year, time) - to only show me the
options of day and month on the pivot (without my having chosen for it to do
that in the first place). Am I making sense as to why I am not understanding
your first idea?
--
Boris

"Dave Peterson" wrote:

If your dates are real dates, you could rightclick on the Date field (In the
pivottable) and choose "Group and show detail".

Then you could group my month (or month and year).

Another option might be to use another column of formulas:

=text(a2,"yyyy-mm")

And use that in the pivottable.

BorisS wrote:

I have a date field in my pivot table, for which source data not only has the
year, but also the time. When I get it into the pivot table, however, there
is no way I can figure out to get it to show me (both in the dropdown for
selection of range or in display of the labels) the date with the year. As
such, because the data spans several years, it's hard to guess which dates to
include and eliminate in order to capture any particular month of a
particular year. Any clues? I know I have no blanks in there, which
sometimes throws date fields off. I know my source is formatted to date
format. I don't have any other ideas of what to try.

Thanks for any help.
--
Boris

--

Dave Peterson


--

Dave Peterson


--

Dave Peterson

Hi Boris

If you group by Year and Month as Dave suggests, you will get a column for
Year (which you can narrow down to 4 chars wide), then Month then your other
data.
The dropdown on Year would allow you to select only a given year, then
select Month within that.

Regards

Roger Govier


BorisS wrote:
well I am also on 2003, SP2.

I see what you're saying now. The level before actual useful dialogues is
called "group and show details". I know the dialogue you're referring to
where you can group by the details of the dates, and I know it can only do
that because what I said originally is true (in that they are all dates). My
problem is that I don't want to have to have three fields (year, month, day)
or even two (mmm-dd and year) to show what's combined within one cell. I
guess what I'm asking is whether this is one of those quirks of pvts, in that
despite the data being dates, and the grouping being able to group the dates
into labels, there is still some inability to treat the labels as date
formats as well.

The part of splitting the date out into years and months and all the grouping
I get. I was trying to avoid having to have two columns. I guess the answer
I'm hearing is that MS was not smart enough to think that if they are going
to give a dropdown of data that in its raw form has MORE pieces to the data
(the year in this case), they should have given the option to see that extra
data. Just weird, given any other field, including numbers with decimals and
text will show you the entirety of what's in the raw data, whereas it sounds
like dates only show up as mmm-dd.
--
Boris


"Roger Govier" wrote:

Hi Boris

If you group by Year and Month as Dave suggests, you will get a column for
Year (which you can narrow down to 4 chars wide), then Month then your other
data.
The dropdown on Year would allow you to select only a given year, then
select Month within that.

Regards

Roger Govier


BorisS wrote:
well I am also on 2003, SP2.

I see what you're saying now. The level before actual useful dialogues is
called "group and show details". I know the dialogue you're referring to
where you can group by the details of the dates, and I know it can only do
that because what I said originally is true (in that they are all dates). My
problem is that I don't want to have to have three fields (year, month, day)
or even two (mmm-dd and year) to show what's combined within one cell. I
guess what I'm asking is whether this is one of those quirks of pvts, in that
despite the data being dates, and the grouping being able to group the dates
into labels, there is still some inability to treat the labels as date
formats as well.