Pivot Tables

[tell-me-more]

Q1. Why do pivot tables always choose count instead of sum? Drives me up the wall! I can't be the only one to find this, surely?

Q2. Why do they often have a blank category in a row or column for no apparent reason?

[Bushwhacker]

These are just the default settings.

I would imagine that MS research their defaults and set them to what they reckon will be the most commonly used.

Personally speaking I am happy that the Data defaults to Count rather than Sum. I guess it just depends on your requirements

blank needs to be included - so that if there are blanks in the data set being pivotted then they can be counted.

If it wasn't there - it would cause confusion as the total of count would not match the number of rows in the data set.