Hi Jim,

When you group dates using the PivotTable grouping tool you can't choose the date format, sorry.

Mynda

Sorry Mynda I owe you my apologies. Because I first didn't believe you with this answer.

But I made a small example and tried it out myself and saw you are as right as always!

See here the three different ways I formatted the raw data first and then converted it to a pivot table.

All three date columns appear in the same way in the pivot table and there is nothing you can do about that.

But maybe this is a solution for Jim Chen: make an extra column in your raw data. Convert the dates to the text you want in the lay-out you want.

Combine that in your pivot table in the way you want to present it. In my example I put this 'text date' in the second column of the pivot table.

Note: you can't group these 'text dates' in the way you are used, but maybe that's not what you want in this case?

Frans

Hi Frans,

Thanks for suggesting the workaround. This is similar to what we do in Power Pivot. It comes with the overhead of extra columns of data, but if the date format is that important, it's the only way.

Mynda

Mynda & Frans,

It is unbelievable that even a trivial question, you guys are trying to find a better solution as possible as you can. Appreciated.

Jim

I have a Pivot table with a date format 24-Jan, but I can't change it to 1/24/yyyy format. I believe that the file is originated from the US.

Hi Jim,

Haven't we already answered this question above?

Mynda

I am having the same issue. My raw data is in another tab and it comes from an odbc connection to a sql view. The date field is a date/time format.  I created a second column in the raw data worksheet and made it = the other column, and formatted the 2nd column as mm/dd/yyyy. No matter what I do, all my dates in the column I'm choosing, whether I choose the original date/time column from the raw data or the 2nd column I created and formatted as mm/dd/yyyy, I can't seem to change the format of the column in the pivot table. I don't understand why this is so difficult. It's something that seems like it should be so easy.  Please see the pic to show my work. 

Hi Courtney,

Welcome to our forum!

Your image didn't upload. You need to click the 'start upload' button after selecting the file and then wait for the grey check mark before submitting your reply.

If your dates are grouped in the PivotTable (which is what causes the date format to become fixed), then you cannot override the default format with a cell format. Instead, you must create the date grouping by adding columns for month, year etc. and then use the ungrouped Date field.

If you're stuck, please upload a sample Excel file so we can help you without having to recreate your data.

Mynda