Hi,
while running the course (currently at chapter 5.12) and in parallel having a look at the Blog I discovered the entry on "Parts to a Whole Excel Charts" from 18th May 2016.
As this is something I would really like to use I started the recreation process - but unfortunately I wasn't able to complete it.
Attached is my Excel file where I have the sheet 'RAW' which contains my input data including customers (which are not important in this case), market areas (north and south), region (each market area has a region 1 and region 2), dates and an amount.
The sheet 'PivotTable' includes - and that might surprise
- a pivot table, a pivot chart and a slicer. The idea is to let the pivot table perform all the percentage calculation and bringing it to the chart and of cause control the time periods shown by the slicer. But though I think that I have all the necessary figures (percentages) available - at least in the pivot table - I would need some help as I'm stuck now with different topics.
- How can I display the percentage label for the selected time period of each region within each market area? (I only get it for the single "bar blocks".)
- In addition: Is there a way to format these "result bars" as a whole? Currently I can only format the parts/"bar blocks" and if I do so including a border you can always see these borders, so noticing that the bar contains several blocks to show the complete position.
- How can I display the coloured totals including percentage labels, so north compared to south? (in the original sheet the light blue and light purple areas which contain the detailed elements)
- As you can see on the slicer it shows the months in order but not taking the actual years into account (Oct, Nov, Dec in 2015 and Jan till Apr in 2016). Is there a way to get the months into the right order (taking years into account as well)? I tried to format the months within the pivot table to show month inclding year but that didn't work out.
Or does the approach I followed simply not work out for the goal I try to reach? It could pretty well be that this was just a nice idea but will never work out this way... 
However I really hope you can help me on those points, even if I have to completely rework the sheets. (And I hope I could make myself clear and got my points more or less properly converted into English sentences.
)
Kind regards
Tobias
Hi Tobias,
I'm afraid you have hit the limitation of the Pivot Chart. Pivot Charts only display what's in the PivotTable and as a result the ability to customise the chart is very limited.
To overcome this I recommend you insert a regular chart and to do this you will either have to build dynamic named ranges that reference the PivotTable (sessions 4.12, 4.13 and 4.14), or build what I call, a Manual Chart Table from the PivotTable:
https://www.myonlinetraininghub.com/creating-excel-charts-from-multiple-pivottables
You can still use the Slicers to control what is displayed in your chart since you will be indirectly referencing the PivotTable as your chart source.
Let me know if you get stuck.
Mynda
Hi Mynda,
thanks a lot for your feedback! So it seems Excel does not always allow the 'easy way' - too sad.
So I created a ChartTable based on the structure you used in your example. As my market areas and regions won't change I could leave that static and only the percentages I triggered from th PivotTable to get them updated.Think with the result I can be quite happy. (Though still any further ideas and suggestions are welcome!)
But would you have a hint for me on the slicer problem I mentioned in point four? As I plan to control the final page by slicer and the sheet will cover several years of data I would like to have it comfortable with this selection so that you can easily select e.g. Oct 2015 and Oct 2016 later on to compare them.
Cheers
Tobias
Ah, sorry I missed point 4. You either have to add a Slicer for the year as well, or you can create a yyyy-mm Slicer using this technique:
https://www.myonlinetraininghub.com/create-a-single-excel-slicer-for-year-and-month
Let me know if you have any problems setting it up.
Mynda
Hi Mynda,
while going forward in the course I should really go back in time in your Blog.
Thanks a lot for delivering that last piece of the puzzle! 
Cheers
Tobias
