Remove Pivot Table Calculated Field With Excel VBA

Yesterday, I started out with the best of intentions, planning to get some work done, and find a couple of topics for upcoming blog posts. Then, while sipping my morning coffee and reading the RSS feeds, I clicked on an article about pivot tables. There were a few lines of sample code for creating a list of fields in the pivot table, which seemed like a good idea, but needed improvement. And there went the day!

But, in the end, I had some useful code for removing calculated fields from the pivot table layout, so the day was productive, but not in the way that I anticipated.

Strange Results for Orientation Property

The journey started out with that simple list of pivot table field names. I wanted to see more information about each field, so I wrote some Excel VBA code to list the pivot field caption, source name, location (orientation), position, sample data, and a formula (calculated fields).

Everything worked well, but the Orientation property gave some strange results for the fields in the Values area. Instead of listing them as Data, they were shown as Hidden.

Check the Data Fields

Next, I tried a different approach, looping through each type of pivot field separately, e.g. RowFields, DataFields. In that list, the orientation was correct, but no sample items were shown for the data fields, and the calculated field formulas weren't listed.

Removing the Data Fields

Going back to the first code example, I played with the Orientation property in the code, but had no success in getting it to display correctly when looping through the PivotFields. When I tried to change the Orientation for the data fields, things got even stranger. I could change the regular data fields to xlHidden, to remove them from the pivot table layout, but those calculated fields wouldn't budge. 

Instead of changing the calculated field Orientation, Excel displayed the error message "Run-time error '1004': Unable to set the Orientation property of the PivotField class"

You can manually uncheck the calculated field boxes, and remove them from the pivot table, then check the box again, to put it back into the layout. However, if you record code while removing the calculated field, that recorded code shows the same error message when you try to run it.

Remove the Calculated Fields

A Google search showed that many other people had encountered this problem, and the only solution seemed to be to delete the calculated field, instead of trying to remove it from the layout. The Google search turned up a line of code to delete the offending calculated field, but that wouldn't be much help if you wanted to keep the calculated field in your pivot table, for use later.

So, I wrote the following code that deletes each calculated field, then immediately adds it back to the pivot table field list, but not into the pivot table layout. If you've been having the same trouble with calculated fields, I hope this helps!

Sub RemoveCalculatedFields()

Dim pt As PivotTable

Dim pf As PivotField

Dim pfNew As PivotField

Dim strSource As String

Dim strFormula As String

Set pt = ActiveSheet.PivotTables(1)

    For Each pf In pt.CalculatedFields

        strSource = pf.SourceName

        strFormula = pf.Formula

        pf.Delete

        Set pfNew = pt.CalculatedFields.Add(strSource, strFormula)

    Next pf
End Sub

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