I’m not holding out too much hope for this, but here goes (it was a choice between here or the Pit).
I’m currently working on a very complex Excel spreadsheet used to calculate average telephone bills and rank each competing tariff. I didn’t design it or build it, and for various reasons it absolutely has to be an Excel spreadsheet. Major redevelopment is out.
It makes use of several pivot tables to calculate call charges for particular destinations. However, these pivot tables seem to be failing and have caused me plenty of grief – and 12-hour days – for some time now. When I run the macros that update the pivot tables, I get the error “Could not set _Default property for the PivotItem class” and every formula fails to calculate as a result. This error had not appeared before, and no changes had been made to the file – I’ve even tried using an old backup copy that was error-free and now I get that error again. There is absolutely no difference in the file, the PC I’m using or anything else since the last time I opened it and it worked.
I’ve tried amending the table, but can’t – I just get the error “Not a valid pivot table”. I’ve tried deleting the table and rebuilding it, but the model was designed in Excel 97 and I can’t create a pivot table in Excel 2000 (which I use) that works the same way and has the same layout.
So – are there any known errors with Excel 2000 pivot tables? Could it be related to using Excel 97-designed spreadsheets and pivot tables in Excel 2000? I’ve trawled MSDN and found nothing relevant.