PowerPivot Field List

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The PowerPivot Field List contains features to help you design a PivotTable, build custom calculations, and work with relationships. The field list becomes visible when you are working with a PivotTable or PivotChart that is based on PowerPivot data. After you have created a PivotTable, you can toggle the visibility of the field list by clicking Field List on the PowerPivot tab. The field list is similar to the Task Pane that is present in a standard Excel workbook, with the addition of some new features to support Slicers and custom calculations. For more information, see Create and Change the Field Layout in a PivotTable or PivotChart Report.

You can hover over tables, measures, and key performance indicators (KPIs) in the Field List to bring up tooltips that feature descriptions of the context of each field.

PivotTable report areas

Description

Message area

Displays information and warnings about changes in the PivotTable or data that require action. Click to take appropriate action.

Message

Click here

Description

Relationship may be needed

Create

Click to start a wizard that automatically detects and suggests relationships.

PowerPivot data was modified

Refresh

Click to synchronize the metadata of the model and update all data.

Search area

Type any part of a field name and click the search icon at the right of the text box. By default, search uses wildcards before and after the text that you type.

If multiple fields contain the search string, click the right and left arrows to move forward or backward through the list of search results.

Slicers Vertical

Drag a field into this area to filter data by values in that field.

When you add a field to this area, the Slicer control is placed along the top side of the PivotTable. The position of the slicer does not affect the selection of the data. For more information, see Filter Data Using Slicers.

Slicers Horizontal

Drag a field into this area to filter data by the values in this field.

When you add a field to this area, the Slicer control is placed along the upper edge of the PivotTable. The position of the Slicer does not affect the selection of the data. For more information, see Filter Data Using Slicers.

Report Filter

Use to filter the entire report based on the selected item in the report filter. The filter control dropdown list appears immediately above the PivotTable or PivotChart.

For example, if you have a report that shows sales for all products, you could drop the Promotions field into the Report Filter area to enable filtering by promotion.

Column Labels

Use to display fields as columns at the top of the report. A column lower in position is nested within another column immediately above it. You can right-click the field to move it to another area of the report.

Row Labels

Use to display fields as rows on the side of the report. A row lower in position is nested within another row immediately above it. You can right-click the field to move it up, down, or to the beginning or end of the list of row labels.

Values

Use to display summary data. Typically you drop numeric fields here. The fields can include calculated columns and measures.

Display Order of Tables and Fields

The tables and fields in the Field List are displayed in alphabetical order.

Error Message: "The command was canceled."

This error message is displayed in the following situations:

  • When you try to add either a PivotTable or a Slicer that would overlap another PivotTable that already exists in the worksheet.

  • When you try to add a field that contains more than 1 million rows, which is the largest number of rows that Excel supports for a PivotTable.

  • When you manually cancel an operation involving a field list action that would have caused an error, such as the previous two examples.

Error Message: "Could not add the field [FieldName] to the PivotTable."

This error message is displayed when you cancel a PivotTable query by using the ESC key while a field is being added to the PivotTable.

See Also

Concepts

Create and Change the Field Layout in a PivotTable or PivotChart Report

Create a PivotTable or PivotChart Report

Take a Tour of the PowerPivot UI