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Changing a PivotChart removes series formatting in Excel

Article ID: 215904 - View products that this article applies to.

This article was previously published under Q215904

SYMPTOMS

When you perform any of the following pivot operations in your PivotChart or the underlying PivotTable report, one or more of your data series lose their formatting:

You refresh the PivotChart or the underlying PivotTable.
You add, remove, or move any fields that you have added to your PivotChart or PivotTable.
You show or hide individual items in any PivotChart or PivotTable field.

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When you perform a pivot operation in a PivotChart or the underlying PivotTable report, Microsoft Excel removes, and then adds the data series back to the chart. When this occurs, all formatting that you have applied to the data series in the chart is lost.

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WORKAROUND

To work around this problem, you can record a Visual Basic for Applications macro that saves the changes that you make to your PivotChart. Then, you can run the macro to reapply the formatting as necessary.

For more information about how to record a macro in Excel, click Microsoft Excel Help on the Help menu, type Record a macro in the Office Assistant or the Answer Wizard, and then click Search to view the topic.

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MORE INFORMATION

When you perform a pivot operation in your PivotChart, all of the following settings are lost:

Any setting that is available on the following tabs in the Format Data Series dialog box:
- Patterns
- Axis
- Y Error Bars
- Data Labels
- Series Order
Any setting that is available on the following tabs in the Format Data Point dialog box:
- Patterns
- Data Labels
Trendlines that you have added to your PivotChart are removed.