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Marcello_Canetto's avatar
Marcello_Canetto
Copper Contributor
May 08, 2024

Multiple hierarchies in pivot table rows but showing in separate columns

Hello,

we are trying to find a solution for the following problem statement using hierarchies in Excel Pivot Tables. I hope the excel community can help with solutions or suggestions.

 

Problem Statement:

Challenge arise while using multiple hierarchies in Pivot Tables from PBI Semantic Model. Please consider below scenario for complete understanding.

Scenario:

Following are the two dimensions with the hierarchies for both.

  1. GL Account
  2. Cost Center

Expectation:

Once the GL Account Hierarchy & Cost Center Hierarchy are dragged and dropped into the rows section of the pivot table fields,  GL Account and Cost Center are nested within the same column A. Please refer to below screenshot where it puts both of them in one column.

 

We might switch to the tabular option, but that doesn't completely fix the problem because it adds more columns based on the levels of the leaf nodes. It becomes more difficult to use the spreadsheet for analysis with so many columns. In fact, there are certain cases where Cost Centers have 7 hierarchy nodes.
The ideal solution is shown in the screenshot below, coming from another reporting tool:

 

Do you think a similar layout can be developed in a Excel Pivot table? Where separate hierarchies unfold in independently in separate columns?
Please if you need clarifications or extra info to understand better, feel free to post and I will update.
Thanks in advance.

  • Yea_So's avatar
    Yea_So
    Bronze Contributor
    The only thing I can think of is to create a data model in excel, create explicit measures, then use cube functions to present the data analysis.

    Here's a video for an example: https://youtu.be/D3RrYnthuSA