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Sort by month in pivot table

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(@lizziec)
Posts: 3
Active Member
Topic starter
 

Hi

I followed the dashboard webinar (which is great) but I cannot sort chronologically by month in my pivot table.  I have followed more options and chosen months but I just get a-z or z-a.  What am I missing here?

Thanks

 

Liz

 
Posted : 08/04/2020 8:37 am
(@mynda)
Posts: 4761
Member Admin
 

Hi Liz,

I'm not sure which dashboard webinar you're referring to as there are many. However, I suspect it might be a constraint caused by a field to the left of your month column.

I answered a similar question to this earlier today here. Please see if that answers your question. If not, please post an example file.

Mynda

 
Posted : 08/04/2020 9:02 am
(@bagallagher)
Posts: 6
Active Member
 

Liz,

 

This sometime happens to me - most often it is because there may be one or more, or all dates in your data that are entered as text. Perhaps try checking your dates, and confirm they are all values. There are several ways to do this. - e.g. try summing them all, or doing other calculations. But it's likely you may need to convert these to numeric values. I've attached a small example of how this could happen. Hope this helps!

Brian

 
Posted : 08/04/2020 9:14 am
(@lizziec)
Posts: 3
Active Member
Topic starter
 

Thank you both for your suggestions.  I am still struggling.  Perhaps my data is too simple as I only need months in my data table.  I have attached an example.  Thanks for your help with this.

I am a novice!

 

Liz

 
Posted : 08/04/2020 10:22 am
(@mynda)
Posts: 4761
Member Admin
 

Hi Liz,

It's as Brian predicted. Your months are not in a date format that Excel recognises as dates, therefore it treats the month names as any other text and sorts alphabetically.

Please see this post on how Excel works with dates and time. You will need to change your month labels to proper date serial numbers, then you can use the grouping in PivotTables to group the dates into months, which can be sorted in calendar order.

Mynda

 
Posted : 08/04/2020 7:08 pm
(@lizziec)
Posts: 3
Active Member
Topic starter
 

Thank you.  I've had success!

 
Posted : 09/04/2020 8:57 am
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