Cannot group that selection (2002 SP2)

Topic

New Reply

Has anyone run into a similar problem and if so how do you work around it.

I have a pivot table with a field that covers payment dates. I would like to group the dates by month. I have done this many times before in similar pivot tables with the exact same field. However occassionally when I try to group the field it comes up with a message box that reads “Cannot group that selection”. I’ve checked the formatting of the cell and it is formatted as a date.

Thansk for any suggestions or info on this problem.

Reply | Quote

Replies

There are several posible causes for this problem:
– Blank cells in the date field. Make sure that there are no blanks.
– Text values among the dates. Unless you have explicitly applied an alignment, dates will be right aligned and text values will be left aligned, even though they may look like dates. Check for text values.
– A left-over old grouping. See if the field list contains a copy of the date field (for example, if the date field is PaymentDate, look for PaymentDate2). If so, add it to the row area and try to ungroup it.

Reply | Quote

Thanks Hans,

I filtered the blanks out of the pivot table and it still won’t group.
I filtered out the blanks from the data source, then pasted the data to a new worksheet redid the pivot table and the grouping worked.

It’s frustrating to work with data and not be able to do what is normally a simple step. I woud have thought that like in other parts of a pivot table it would have grouped the blanks together.

Thanks for explaining why it wouldn’t work.

Reply | Quote

This is why it is important to ensure that your source data is all valid. You know the expression: “garbage in, garbage out”. Excel can only work with what you feed into it.

Steve

Reply | Quote