Say Goodbye to Messy Pivot Tables: Fix Blanks, Errors, and Zeros with Ease!

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🎯 Get rid of errors, blank cells, and zero line items in pivot tables to make your pivot table look good and avoid cluttering your report.

In this Excel PivotTable tutorial you will learn how to delete blank rows, hide blank records, change blank cell to something else, change Pivot Table blank spots to zero, remove the Pivot Table error DIV/0 and remove N/A errors. You can use the standard PivotTable number format option to show zeros as blanks, but if you want to know how to change blank cells in a Pivot Table then you need to watch this video. To change Pivot Table empty cells to zero you use go to PivotTable options where there are options to change Pivot Table blanks to zeros and show any pivotable error as zero, and thereby ensure you remove errors from your Pivot Table. I will also go through how to hide blank records in a Pivot Table in this pivotable tutorial. Rather than delete blank rows in a table, it is much better to hide blank rows which can be done using the Pivot Table filter options.

If we want to get rid of the blank cells and errors there is a pivot table option that deals with both of these things. Clicking anywhere in the pivot table you can right click and select pivot table options. You can see on the layout and format tab there is a box saying ‘for error values show’ and ‘for empty cells show’. We just tick both of those and enter what we want.

It's tempting to put a zero for an error, but if you do that you get a zero but grand total also zeroes so it doesn't become the grand total of that row or column any longer. The only way I found out how to get around this is to go back to the source data and correct for the error, which is far far from ideal. If you're going to do this and you're going to show errors as zeros you need to make sure you're not showing any grand totals anywhere. You don't need to show grand totals so we could just remove the grand totals on pivot table options so we're not showing anything disingenuous and we've not got totals at the bottom. We could then manually total these if we wanted to make it look like the rest of the pivot table.

If we wanted to remove all the rows where everything comes to a zero you can right-click on the pivot table and select filter and then value filters. Select where the sum does not equal zero, as we only want to see lines where the sum of the row does not equal zero. If I do that what that's done is removed any rows where everything has a zero and if I just quickly go down to the bottom you see we've cut several hundred rows out of this pivot table, which is going to make it a lot easier on the eye, and we're not showing any data we no longer need to see.

In this Excel tutorial, I'll demonstrate how to tidy up messy pivot tables by removing errors, blank cells, and zero line items.

Topics covered include:

1. Identifying and Removing Blank Cells and Errors: Learn to identify and eliminate blank cells and errors using Excel's built-in options. This ensures your pivot table is clean and professional, enhancing data presentation.

2. Adjusting Zero Values and Error Displays: Understand how to format zero values and errors for better visual appeal and information clarity. Discover potential issues when displaying errors as zeros and how to resolve them effectively.

3. Filtering Zero Line Items: Learn to filter out rows with all zero values, improving pivot table readability. By removing unnecessary data, focus on meaningful insights without clutter.

Benefits of these techniques:

Improved Data Presentation: Present data clearly and organized for better readability and usability.
Enhanced Data Accuracy: Ensure pivot table accuracy by eliminating errors and blank cells.
Time Savings: Save time by efficiently cleaning up pivot tables without manual adjustments.
Streamlined Analysis: Focus on key insights by removing zero line items for more effective analysis.

Join us at Excel Up for more tutorials to enhance your Excel proficiency. Let's optimize your pivot tables and boost your productivity. See you soon!