You wouldn’t think that number formats would be a part of this technique that requires trickery, but with the calculated items, every cell in C3:F10 (see Figure 2) is seen as a Revenue cell. Call this field “% Change.” The formula should be = Change / ‘2018’. With cell C2, D2, or E2 selected, use Insert Calculated Item again. You can use the first calculated item to calculate future calculated items. When you click OK, a new column showing Change will appear in the pivot table. You can then double-click on the 2019 item from the right side of the dialog box to insert ‘2019’ in the formula. You need to click at the end of the formula and backspace to remove the zero from the formula. Give the new item a name, such as “Change.” The formula always starts out as =0. Choose Calculated Item.Ī dialog box for Insert Calculated Item in “Year” will appear. On the PivotTable Analyze tab, open Fields, Items, and Sets. It might seem subtle, but you have to select one of the column headings for 2018 or 2019 before invoking the command. To calculate the change from 2018 to 2019, use a Calculated Item in the pivot table. As we’ll see, the process involves using the Calculated Item feature, which isn’t compatible with the Year created using the Group Field command. It’s important to add this field to the original data set and not create the field using Group Field in the Pivot Table. Alternatively, you might use Power Query’s Column From Examples feature to add the column. Use “Year” as the heading, and copy the formula down to all rows of your data. Assuming your data has a date column, add a formula such as =YEAR(C2) to your original data set so there’s a separate column showing just the year.
After trying it a few times, I found it’s far more robust than the other methods and can easily adapt after new fields have been added to the row area of the pivot table. But these formulas aren’t smart enough to expand or contract as the height of the pivot table changes.Īt a recent Excel seminar for an IMA ® chapter, someone in the audience showed me a new method. You have to remember to manually unhide the original blank column and hide the new blank column.Īnother common option is to use cells to the right of the pivot table to hold regular Excel formulas to calculate the change from the previous year. When you add a new row field, the blank column moves to the right and is no longer hidden. This leaves an extra blank column where the nonexistent change from two years ago should be.
An example of an approach I’ve used in the past is the Percentage Change from Previous method.