Pivot Tables "too many row or column items"

[Watco]

When constructing a Pivot Table, I get the following error "Microsoft Excel cannot make this change because there are too many row or column items. Drag at least one row or column field off the PifotTable report, or to the page position....

What is the meaning of this? I need all of the fields on the report. Why is there a restriction, or limit? What is the workaround?
Kevin.

 

[etarhan]

Roughly speaking, the resultant pivot table can have a maximum of 256 columns. This is the max width of an Excel sheet. If your selection criteria results in a wider table, then you'll get this message.

If, let's say, you have a worksheet which contains some 1,000 rows and these are transformed into 1,000 columns in your Pivot Table, then it will not work. There is no workaround and your only remedy is to reconstruct the Pivot Table in such a way that the Excel limitations are honoured.

The most common error that can cause this situation occurs when trying to create a PT from data that contains date information, and trying to use the dates as column headers. Regardless of the format in which they are displayed, the dates are kept internally as a number, and even though you see (for example) month/year representation in your original file, each and every date will be put on a different column. Having the time information inside will aggravate this problem.

Good luck,
Engin