You set up a pivot table, but it looks sort of ugly. Fortunately, you get a lot of flexibility. Here are some pointers on the formatting.
Pull up the Pivot Table Format worksheet to follow along and do the exercise.
Here was the pivot table we first created two lessons ago. Notice how the numbers don't necessarily line up.
Put your cursor on a cell in the pivot table and right click to pull up the menu below.
Select Field Settings. This will pull up the Pivot Table Fields dialog box.
Now click on Number to get to the formatting dialog box.
If it looks familiar, it is similar to the first tab you get when you select to format cells on a regular worksheet. Select the formatting you want, then click OK to move back to the previously shown Pivot Table Field dialog. Click OK and now you have the numbers formatted to your liking.
Just like with regular worksheets, you can format your numbers in pivot tables. By using the process mentioned above, you can format the entire data field at once.
Suppose you wanted to just one format one cell in a pivot table. You could format just like you would a cell in a regular worksheet. You could select Format, then Cells from the menu bar. Or you could just click on an icon like we have done below:
Notice that this just changes the individual cell. Our prior method is faster for formatting an entire data field.
You could also format a pivot table using AutoFormat from the Format menu.
Pivot tables allow you a wide range of options for formatting. One advantage is they offer a quick way to format an entire range of data at once.