Formatting numbers in a pivot table

There are two ways to control how a measure's numbers appear in a pivot table: by changing the value field settings for the measure, or by changing its underlying model's Format property.

All of the examples below show how to change the format of the average price measure below to show just two decimal places.

Changing a measure's value field settings

You can change the format of a measure in a pivot table by going to its value field settings.  Either like this:

You can click on the arrow next to a measure in the pivot table field list and choose this option.

Or like this:

You can alternatively right-click on any single cell in a pivot table and choose the option shown.

You can then choose to change the format of the numbers calculated for this measure:

Click on the Number Format button at the bottom left of the dialog box which appears, as shown above.

You can now change the number format in the standard Excel way:

Here, for example, we're setting the numbers to display with two decimal places only.

Better!

The average prices are now easier to read.

Alternative method: changing the model's default format for a measure

Perhaps a better way to change the format of a statistic is in your model - then all client tools such as Excel pivot tables will use this format by default to display it.

To change the default format for a measure like this, first select it:

Click on the measure whose format you want to change (you'll find your measure in the grid at the bottom of the table to which it belongs).

Display the properties window for the measure (the easiest way to do this is probably to press F4), and change the default format for the measure:

Here we're setting the measure to display with two decimal places.  You can use the Show Thousand Separator property to divide thousands, millions, billions, etc.

When you save your model and refresh the pivot table, the number formatting will update to the setting you've chosen.

Having looked at how you can change how numbers appear, let's now widen the net and look at how you can make more general changes to the formatting of a pivot table.