I have some information that I'd like to display at the top of an Excel Pivot table. Naturally, I tried:
TABLE FILE CAR
"Hello"
PRINT SALES
BY COUNTRY
BY MODEL
ON TABLE PCHOLD FORMAT EXL2K PIVOT
END

Unfortunately, when I try to put COUNTRY or MODEL into the Page Area on the Pivot Table, Excel gives me an error:
"Cannot change part of a merged cell."

The heading "Hello" is on the first row, and field A1 is merged across A1:C1 (since there are 3 columns on the report) ...ANY help on this would be greatly appreciated.

Again, I need a working pivot table with some sort of heading information. Actually, I could get by with specifying the .xls filename if that's even possible via WebFOCUS.

Thanks in advance,
Michael

I found a solution/workaround & thought others might benefit from it. It allows the user to add up to 3 page fields without inserting new rows. If they need more than 3, they can add more rows below the header.


HEADING
"Hello"
" "
" "
" "
" "
...
TYPE=HEADING,
STYLE=BOLD,
HEADALIGN=BODY,
$
I hope this helps.
-Michael

This message has been edited. Last edited by: <Mabel>,

Hi there, Michael.

I spoke with the Product Manager: In speaking with our developers, the current implementation of Excel Pivot is correct.

HEADING
"sample text"

The above will create a row in the spreadsheet (outside of the Pivot table). This is correct way of displaying heading and footing information. It would not be correct to place this information inside the pivot table, (which it seems you want to do?)

If you can give us an example of you would do this natively with Excel, we could re-visit this.

Monica

I agree...The heading does not belong in the Pivot Table section of the Excel spreadsheet. It belongs ABOVE the pivot table, which is exactly how WebFOCUS behaves. I was able to reproduce the behavior completely within Excel (not using IBI at all), and so concluded that it's a problem with Microsoft, NOT IBI.

The problem lies in having non-pivot-table cells above a pivot table. When you try to add page fields to the pivot table, Excel seems to anchor the first row of the pivot table. Consequently, the page fields are added above the pivot area, and eventually encroach on the non-pivot cells above the pivot table. My posted workaround puts a few extra blank rows between the heading and the pivot table, which allows a user to add a few page fields on their own. If they want to add more page fields, they need to insert more rows. The HEADALIGN=BODY setting puts my entire heading in the first cell on each row, rather than merging multiple cells together. This eliminates the "Cannot change part of a merged cell" prompt.

Again, I've found an acceptable workaround for Microsoft's problem. It's nice to know that WebFOCUS is flexible enough to get around some of the deficiencies of other programs.

Thanks,
Michael