Grouping data in pivot table columns

[Guest]

I'm a beginner with pivot tables and I'm trying to set up columns on my pivot
table to compare data with the prior year. I would like to have the columns
compare monthly data side by side, then year to date side by side as follows:

May2006 May2005 May2006 YTD May2005 YTD

So far, I have only been able to group the data so that I have:

May2006 May2006 YTD May2005 May2005 YTD

Any ideas?

 

[Guest]

Try this and see if it works. When you pull the column into the data area of
the pivot table, pull it according to the order of column i.e. start with
May2006, then May2005, May2006 YTD and May2005 YTD

 

[Guest]

My data source is all sales for the year with each transaction listed by
date. So in my data area, I have the qty sold. Then the column fields are
year and month. I know in the data field it lets you drag over the field
twice and would just title it data and data2, but it doesn't allow that in
the column field so I don't know how I would drag the months over seperately.


Thanks

 

[Guest]

Let me try to understand what you are trying to do. Your pivot table is
showing the following order of column

May2006 May2006 YTD May2005 May2005 YTD

But you want the order to be as follows

May2006 May2005 May2006 YTD May2005 YTD

If that is the case, then try this. To move the columns, click the header
cell that you want to move (eg May2005). Then move your cursor to the edge of
the active cell till you see the drag and cut arrows. Drag the cell you want
to move to the order that you want. The data will follow the header so you
can just ignore the data.

Hope this helps.

 

[Guest]

Thanks very much for the suggestion. The problem is I have included the
months Jan thru May in the data, I've hidden Jan - Apr so that only May 2006
and 2005 is displayed and I can then show the sub-totals for the YTD amounts.
So if I try dragging the one column,it pulls all the months for the year so
it just reverses the order of the years, but I still have month, YTD, month,
YTD.

Maybe it's not possible to do this within the pivot table and I'll just need
to show the monthly information within the pivot table and manually add
columns outside the pivot table to show the year to date information.

Thanks again!