Page 367 - Microsoft Office Excel 2003 Programming Inside Out

Part 5: Manipulating Excel Objects

Chapter 16

PivotTables and PivotCharts

PivotTables and PivotCharts . . . . . . . . . 341 Manipulating PivotTables
PivotTable Objects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348 Programmatically. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359
Programming PivotTables. . . . . . . . . . . 356

This chapter discusses how to create and manipulate PivotTables and PivotCharts using
Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). In this chapter, you will learn about the
objects associated with PivotTables and PivotCharts and how to manipulate PivotTables and
associated objects programmatically.

PivotTables and PivotCharts

Worksheets are a useful tool when you are dealing with two-dimensional data that can be
organized into rows and columns. However, there are many situations where your data can
be viewed in multiple ways. Although you could build multiple worksheets and charts based
on the data from the original worksheet, creating a new worksheet or chart for every different
aspect of your data that you want to emphasize can quickly spin out of control. Fortunately,
Microsoft Excel includes a feature that gives you a powerful tool to deal with this problem.

PivotTables and PivotCharts provide useful ways to look at your data from multiple perspec­
tives. Often you can find hidden relationships between two or more fields that you might
have otherwise ignored.

Introducing PivotTables

A PivotTable is a tool that lets you deal with multidimensional reports. Figure 16-1 contains a
simple two-dimensional report—also known as a cross tabulation report—where you have a
predefined collection of columns and rows indexing summary data.

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