Appearance of a pivot table

Once we have created a Pivot table we can change the way it looks. Depending on the settings, the Pivot tables can be distinguished, although all those formatting properties that apply to the traditional Excel tables apply to them. By changing the style and displaying individual table elements (totals, subtotals, headers of rows  and columns), we can change the look of the Pivot table in accordance with the reporting needs.

Let’s see what options for changing the appearance of the Pivot table exist in the Design toolbar. If you remember, this is a contextual toolbar that will appear only after we create a Pivot table and click on it. First, on its right side, we can see the Pivot Table Styles group. By clicking on some of the styles we apply it in the table. Also, by opening a window with styles, other available styles, as well as the ability to create a new style, will be displayed.

On the left side of the styles palette there are four checkbox fields: Row Headers, Column Headers, Banded Rows and Banded Columns. By selecting or deselecting a field, we can display or hide names of rows or columns; also, by checking appropriate boxes we determine whether the rows will be banded (which means whether each row or other column will have a different background color). If you recall, this is a common case in the accounting reports to make the data more visible.

The Blank Rows options allows you to insert (Insert Blank Line after Each Item) or remove empty row (Remove Blank Line after Each Item) after each row of data. This is useful if we print a Pivot table, so we want to leave an empty space for comments or correction of the report.

Report Layout is a set of options that is used to change an appearance of Power pivot report. Here we can choose: Compact, Outline or Tabular Form, which are three ways of displaying data. Which of these ways we will choose depends on the type of report that is being made. There are two options here: Repeat Item Labels and Do Not Repeat Item Labels. In case we have selected the Outline Report Form with these options we select how the names of the elements in the report will be displayed.

In the end, there are two more menus to determine how the subtotals and totals will be displayed. Subtotals menu has four options: Do Not Show Subtotals, Show all Subtotals at the Bottom of Group and Show all Subtotals at the Top of Group. If a filter is applied to the data, there is an option to include them in the subtotals, which is called Include Filtered Items in Totals.