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Bogging Down with Calculated Items

Summary: Create a complex PivotTable and you may find that your system slows to a crawl. The reason for this may be due to the way in which you directed the PivotTable to analyze your data. Here's some ideas on how to speed things up. (This tip works with Microsoft Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, Excel 2003, and Excel 2007.)

Torben wrote about a problem he was having with PivotTables in Excel. It seems that whenever he adds calculated items to the PivotTable, Excel takes a performance hit. If his dataset contains even a few thousand records, Excel even hangs.

PivotTables put a huge strain on Excel, as it slices, dices, and analyzes the data to create the table. The amount of strain experienced depends on many different factors, such as size of the dataset, the data in the PivotTable, etc. These factors can seemingly conspire against you, leaving you with a system that is sluggish at best.

There are ways, however, to change how Excel works with data to create the PivotTable. If you modify the settings that control this process, you may notice an improvement in Excel's responsiveness. There is no guarantee that these changes will cure all PivotTable problems, but they offer a good place to start. The changes you can make are covered in a Knowledge Base article, located here:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=273583

Read through the article and try some of the suggestions—you never know; it could make your PivotTables easier and faster to work with. (Even though the article specifically says it is applicable to Excel 2000, the concepts it suggests can be easily used with other versions of Excel.)

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2619) applies to Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

Organize Your Data! Using the powerful sorting capabilities of Excel can help you get your data into just the order you need. Find out how you can use the full capabilities of sorting to your benefit.
 
Check out ExcelTips: Serioius Sorting today!