Comments on: Grouping by Date in a Pivot Table

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:28:24 +0000

Good tips, thanks Jon

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 04:34:17 +0000

Come on, Thom. No excuse to stay a newbie at such a useful and powerful feature.

By: Thom Mitchell

Thom Mitchell — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 02:53:59 +0000

Most helpful for a Pivot Table newbie! Thanks, Jon!

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 11:29:05 +0000

Richard – That’s right. Any non numeric values preclude grouping within that field.

By: Richard Robinson

Richard Robinson — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 11:04:26 +0000

The critical thing for me was not including the column headings in the pivot table selection! If you include them you can’t use the group by date function. You get an error message. After much hair-tearing I started again without the headings and it is fine.

Thanks v. much

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 14:01:54 +0000

Hi Jay - It looks like Excel's grouping feature only gives you the ability to define a bin width if you are grouping by days. The entry box below the list of time periods only says "Number of days", and it is disabled if any time period other than days is selected:

Below is a set of times, randomly distributed between midnight and 4am. The first pivot table is merely a list (and I have chosen to sort by time). The second is grouped by hours and minutes. Only the hours and minutes that appear in the data are listed, unless you choose the field option to show items with no data, in which case you will display every minute of every hour in the table. There is no provision to group into 15 or 30-minute intervals. The last block uses the frequency array function to do what you ask. The first column defined the upper limit of each bin. The second column contains an array formula:

{=FREQUENCY(E5:E29,N5:N13)}

Don't type the curly brackets. Select the entire range that will contain the output, type the formula into the formula bar, then hold Ctrl+Shift while pressing Enter. If done correctly, Excel rewards you with the curly brackets.

By: Jay Killeen

Jay Killeen — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 04:13:55 +0000

Is there any way to group minutes in the same way that you have explained grouping days. Its driving me insane that it is giving the option to group days, and allows you to say how many days, but it does not do the same thing for every other time grouping option.

Any suggestions.

All I am trying to do is group loads of concrete delivered within 7:00am and 7:30am each day.

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:22:51 +0000

Mitch -

If any cells in the Date column contain non-dates, you will get this message, since Excel doesn’t know how to group such values with dates.

By: Mitch

Mitch — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:00:10 +0000

what if you receive the error message that you cannot group these dates in the pivot table??

What I am I doing wrong

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 19:24:52 +0000

Ken -

I’m surprised I didn’t mention that. I spent an hour the first time I tried grouping dates, and it failed because my data source included a blank row.