PivotTable Fundamentals - Microsoft Business Intelligence Tools for Excel Analysts - page 23

Figure 2-9: Select the new range that feeds your PivotTable.
3. Change the range selection to include any new rows or columns.
4. Click OK.
Customizing Your PivotTable
PivotTables often need to be tweaked to achieve the look and feel you want. In this section, we cover
some of the ways that you can customize your PivotTables to suit your dashboard's needs.
Changing the PivotTable layout
Excel 2013 gives you a choice in the layout of your data in a PivotTable. The three layouts, shown side
by side in Figure 2-10, are Compact Form, Outline Form, and Tabular Form. Although no layout stands
out as being better than another, most people prefer the Tabular Form layout because it's easiest to
read and most people who have seen PivotTables are used to it.
The layout you choose not only affects the look and feel of your reporting mechanisms, but it may
also affect the way you build and interact with any dashboard models based on your PivotTables.
Changing the layout of a PivotTable is easy. Follow these steps:
1. Click anywhere inside your PivotTable.
2. On the Design tab of the Ribbon, click the Report Layout icon's drop-down menu and choose
the layout you like.
Renaming the fields
Every field in your PivotTable has a name. The fields in the rows, columns, and filter areas inherit their
names from the data labels in your source data. For example, the fields in the Values area are given a
name, such as Sum of Sales Amount.