"Sum of Total Cost" is redundant; I said "Total", didn't I?

July 28, 2008 9:42 AM

Excel 2007: How do I get "Sum of" out of the data headers of my Pivottable?

I used to consistently use the "Table 7" design in Excel 2003, which would strip "Sum of" out of the headings wonderfully. Now the design menu is gone, and if I change (say) "Sum of Total Cost" to "Total Cost" by hand, I get a "PivotTable field name already exists".

I could always rename it to "Total Cost " (note the trailing space), but such a kludge makes me cringe. I've tried changing the data source of past PivotTables to my new data, but that almost always makes Excel crash.

Has Excel simply lost this?

posted by skryche to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

If you don't mind losing the pivot table and only need the data simply copy and paste the data out to another table and retype your headers.
posted by kasperj74 at 11:24 AM on July 28, 2008

I'm afraid I'm going to be regularly updating the data, so making it static isn't an option.
posted by skryche at 11:31 AM on July 28, 2008

When you create the "Layout" of the Pivot Table (dragging values into the row/columns/data areas), you should be able to double click on any column/value that you place and change the displayed name of it. You could delete "Sum of" or change the whole thing to "Skryche Rules!" if you wanted to.
posted by milqman at 1:43 PM on July 28, 2008

Nope. Deleting "Sum of" gives me "PivotTable field name already exists".
posted by skryche at 8:34 AM on July 29, 2008