Excel® 2007 PivotTables and PivotCharts

Chapter 9. Creating a PivotChart

Understanding PivotChart Limitations

A PivotChart is a graphical representation of the values in a PivotTable report. However, a PivotChart goes far beyond a regular chart because a PivotChart comes with many of the same capabilities as a PivotTable. These capabilities include hiding items, filtering data via the report filter, refreshing the PivotChart to account for changes in the underlying data, and more. Also, if you move fields from one area of the PivotTable to another, the PivotChart changes accordingly. You also have access to most of Excel's regular charting capabilities, so PivotCharts are a powerful addition to your data analysis toolkit.

However, PivotCharts are not a perfect solution. Excel has fairly rigid rules for which parts of a PivotTable report correspond to which parts of the PivotChart layout. Moving a field from one part of the PivotChart to another can easily result in a PivotChart layout that is either difficult to understand or that does not make any sense at all.

Similarly, you also face a number of other limitations thatcontrol the types of charts you can make and the formatting options you can apply. For example, you cannot configure a PivotChart to use the Stock chart type, which can be a significant problem for some applications.

This section outlines these and other PivotChart limitations. Note, however, that most of these limitations are not onerous in most situations, so they should in no way dissuade you from taking ...