Keeping It Clear

Published Tue, Aug 11 2009 8:17 | Bob Phillips

It is not my intention for EDDD to be another 'Excel Tips & Tricks' blog, there are plenty of good examples of these already, but I saw someone struggling in a demonstration recently so I am thinking that this technique is not as well know as I had presumed, nor as it should be. Therefore I shall share it with you all.

Firstly, I hope we all agree that the Pivot table Field List in Excel 2007 is a big improvement over earlier versions. However, sometimes the cost of a nice facility is that comes at the cost of a lot of real estate, the field list is quite big. And it is rooted to the right of the Excel window. Or is it?

Actually, you can tear it off, move it and resize it.

Move the cursor towards the top of the field list until the cursor changes to  a cross with arrows at all points

At this point, you can tear off the field list using the mouse left button, and drag it off to wherever you want it on the screen, and resize it to whatever size is good for you.

This is so much easier than scrolling the data and pivots around so that the field list does not obscure the point being made.

To restore it to its original position, just double-click in the title bar.

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Comments

# JP said on August 12, 2009 11:11 AM:

I thought everyone knew that. It's the same behavior in 2003.

I'm surprised to see you pay compliments to Excel 2007. Does this mean you actually use it?

# Bob Phillips said on August 12, 2009 12:31 PM:

Well, clearly not everyone knew it otherwise I wouldn't have seen the problem in that demonstration <g>.

I appreciate that it is the same in 2003, but as nearly everyone already knows it, it is likely that those that don't are using 2007. Seriously, unless there is a particular reason to use 2003 all of my posts will use 2007. We have to face reality.

There is nothing wrong with paying compliments to something good. There are many good things about pivots in 2007, and I like tables in 2007. But bottom line, some of my customers use 2007, so I have to.

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