About formatting a PivotTable list and its elements

You can format row, column, total, or detail fields, the title bar and drop area captions, and custom properties of row or column fields in the following ways:

• Setting text formats You can set the font, font size, and color for text, and make text bold, underlined, or italic. Changes that users make to the browser's settings for fonts and colors have no effect on PivotTable lists.

• Aligning text in a cell You can display values so that they are left-aligned, right-aligned, or centered horizontally in the cells. You cannot change the values' vertical alignment.

• Setting background colors You can change the background color for cells. Changes that users make to the browser's settings for colors have no effect on PivotTable lists.

• Changing number formats You can change the formats in which numbers, dates, and times in a field are displayed to any of several predefined number formats. In Microsoft Visual Basic or in a script, you can assign custom number formats to the data.

  For example, you can display a number as currency or as a percentage, and you can display a date in long format, with the day and month spelled out, or in abbreviated format. Changes to the number format do not change the actual values, only how the values are displayed. In the browser, the user's regional settings in Microsoft Windows Control Panel affect how the number formats you set are displayed.

Formats that you apply to one element might affect similar elements. For example, if you change the text color for an item, all other items in the same field are formatted with the new text color.

You cannot set the formats for an entire PivotTable list in one operation. You need to format each element in the PivotTable list individually.

To customize the appearance of every element in a PivotTable list, you might need to change the layout temporarily to format elements that you don't plan to include in your initial presentation of the data. For example, to establish formats for a field in the detail area when the initial layout doesn't include that detail field, you'll need to move a field to the detail area, format it, and then move the field back to its previous area. When users move fields to different areas of the PivotTable list in the browser, the fields and their data take on the formatting you've established for fields and data in those areas.