Calculated Fields in PivotTables

by Daljit Dhadwal

PivotTables are one of the most useful tools in Excel. One feature that can be confusing to use is calculated fields. In this example I show how to use calculated fields to calculate the percentage of sales arising from a specific product by city and have the percentage of sales automatically aggregate to the provincial level. The screenshots are from Excel 2007.

Here’s what the raw data looks like (Sample_Data)

sample_data

The pivot table is setup as follows:

pivot_table

Next we add a calculated field:

add_calculated_field

We then define how the new field will be calculated. In this case we’ll call the new field “Percent Sales Product A” and define it as sales of Product A/Total Sales.

Calculated_Field

Finally we format the calculated field, and we can also drop in the province field to demonstrate that the aggregation works properly.

final_pivot_table