dougnewton's avatar
01-15-2024
Status:
New Idea

Widow/orphan control in Pivot tables that have subtotals

Similar to widow-orphan control of Paragraph page breaks in MS Word... it would be nice to have this in pivot tables too.

That is, let's say the existing rows/subtotals in a pivot table take up 20 out of the "rows per page" value of 25.  If the next sub-section to display is going to take 3 rows, great, show that section.  But if the next sub-section is going to show 10 items, it means the subsection/subtotal will be split across two pages.  This is hard to remembe/digest/use when interacting with the dashboard. 

With widow-orphan control, it would do a page break "early" before showing that next subsection of 10 items.

1 Comment

  • Here's an alternative way to implement this idea: 

    When you're in a pivot table, you can set the number of rows to any arbitrary number -- 15, 25, 50.  What if you had an option  there for "Break on  column".  If you pick that value, you have a 2nd dropdown where you choose from one of the columns in the pivot table (left-hand pane).

    With this approach, though, the vertical size of the widget could change from page to page, which might be disruptive to the overall layout.