Excel Pivot Tables Not Displaying Proper Columns When Switching From Mac to Windows and Vice Versa

Question

I'm having issues making a pivot table displaying the right columns when being sent from a Mac to a Windows user, and vice versa.

As an example, I generate an Excel file on my Mac, and it may look this: 

However, when I send that to a co-worker who has a PC, the pivot table does not display all the columns. It looks like this:

In order to view the pivot table properly, my co-worker will have to manually display it by: click on pivot table -> PivotTable Tools Analyze -> Field List -> click on the missing columns to display them.

To make things even stranger, when my co-worker saves the file on her end and sends that new file back to me, then the pivot table doesn't display all the columns on MY end! I see the exact same thing that she saw when I sent her over my Excel file. I would then have to manually make the pivot table display the missing columns as well.

What can I do to resolve this very annoying issue?

Answer 1

PivotTables are undergoing a major revision in build 15.41 of Excel for Mac, which you can get right now.

Go to the Help menu in Excel and choose Check for Updates, which launches AutoUpdate app.

In AutoUpdate, click the check box to join Insider, and leave the setting at Insider Slow. This will give you next week's general release of build 15.41 a week early. The new build should have the same code in it as Excel for Windows. If there is still a difference, there is likely a problem on the PC side.

Answer 2

Hi Louispha,

I was trying to reproduce the behavior but the PivotTable columns show up correctly when switching from Mac to Windows and Vice Versa on my side.

We need to confirm few things to better understand your situation:

1.  Please help provide the detailed steps about how you create the pivot table.

2.  Please help capture a screenshot of the original data and another screenshot of your PivotTable Builder page as the below picture.

3.  Does this happen to one workbook or all workbooks? To check this, you can try creating a new simple workbook with PivotTable on Mac and then open it on a Windows PC to check the result.

4.  If the document is opened on a different Widows computer, does it exhibit same behavior?

5.  Your Excel version build which you can check from Excel menu>About Excel and your mac OS version build which you can check from Apple menu>About this Mac. And the Excel product information (Subscription Product, Channel, Version build) on a Windows computer and the Windows OS version (for example, Windows 10, Windows 8 and so on).

Regards,

Joanne