PivotWrap

Pivot Table Wrapper Class for Excel VBA

About

The pivot table is arguably Excel's most powerful tool. It can summarize so much data in so little time with no more than a few clicks and drags. But creating and controlling one using VBA is a different story. The amount of boilerplate required to build the simplest of pivot tables is mind-bloggling. If you're an Excel power user who enjoy writing code from scratch to interact with pivot tables in your VBA projects, then you're probably the only one out there, end if.

PivotWrap is a set of VBA class modules that streamlines the pivot table coding experience for greater productivity. It takes care of the boilerplates for you so you can focus on building pivot tables of all complexities using concise, intuitive class methods.

Installing PivotWrap

Open up the Visual Basic Editor (Alt+F11) in your macro-enabled project workbook, then import (Ctrl+M) both clsPt.cls and clsPtField.cls files. Once imported, you'll see them in the Class Modules folder in the Project Explorer (Ctrl+R).

You'll also need to enable the Microsoft Scripting Runtime reference. Go to Tools/References and set a tick the checkbox beside Microsoft Scripting Runtime. This reference enables the use of the Scripting library and the Scripting.Dictionary class that is used in PivotWrap.

Using PivotWrap

Initializing Class Module

First, select the Range of the source data.

Dim rng as Range
Set rng = ActiveWorkbook.Worksheets("SourceData").Range("A3:J199")

Make sure that the top row of the Range is the header row. As best practice, each header should be unique. Note that Excel allows you to create a pivot table with duplicate headers in the source data (It adds a number suffix to one of them in the PivotTable Fields but the source data headers remain duplicated). In contrast, PivotWrap will not allow duplicate headers in the source data. It will directly overwrite the offending header in the source data with an added suffix.

Once the source data Range is defined, PivotWrap can be initialized.

Dim pt As PtW
Set pt = New PtW

pt.init rng

The init method accepts a Range argument, which it uses as the SourceData for creating a pivot cache.

Adding Pivot Fields

Pivot fields can be added individually or collectively in an array. Adding pivot fields one by one offers more control over the field settings.

Dim ptf As PtWField

' Create a "Region" PivotWrap row field, 
' sort by "Revenue" in descending order, 
' filter by top 12 items in "Revenue"
Set ptf = pt.add_row_field( _
	field_name:="Region", _
	position:=1, _
	sort_by:="Revenue", _
	sort_order:=xlDescending, _
	filter_type:=xlTopCount, _
	filter_by_field_name:="Revenue", _
	filter_value1="12")

' Create a "Month" PivotWrap column field
pt.add_column_field "Month", 1

' Create a "Year" PivotWrap page field,
' set current page to 2012, 2016, 2017
pt.add_page_field "Year", 1, , Array("2012", "2016", "2017")

' Create a "TotalRevenue" PivotWrap data field
Set ptf = pt.add_data_field("TotalRevenue", "Revenue", 1, , xlSum)

' Create an "AverageRevenue" PivotWrap data field
pt.add_data_field "AvgRevenue", "Revenue", 2, , xlAverage

Creating multiple PtWFields with the same orientation is straightforward

Dim ptfs() As ptWField

Set ptfs = pt.add_row_fields(array("Region", "Year"))

pt.add_column_fields array("Month", "Weekday")

Creating Pivot Table

Once pt has been populated with pivot fields, call pt.create to create a pivot table. pt.create has several optional parameters to choose output range and override output fields.

' Creates a pivot table at Range("C10") of Worksheet "Output" in ActiveWorkbook
pt.create destination_row:=10, destination_column:=3, _
	table_name:="MyPivotTable", _
	destination_worksheet_name:="Output", _
	destination_workbook:=ActiveWorkbook


' Default behaviour: Creates a pivot table at Range("C3") of Worksheet "PivotTable" in ActiveWorkbook
pt.create