Thread: problem using sorting within pivottables?

Hi guys, awesome forum here. I'm pretty much a total excel newbie, but I've managed to nearly finish what i started out trying to do, but I'm hitting a snag.

Basically, I'm starting with an excel file that has a list of machinenames and the associated software installed on each one, in the form of:

machine 1 | software 1
machine 1 | software 2
machine 1 | software 3
machine 2 | software 3
machine 2 | software 4
machine 3 | software 1
machine 3 | software 2

etc

and i've created a graphical table that basically sorts the most common software apps, so basically i can see what's a "base install" for most of the machines on the network and what's extraneous/user installed software.
What i'm trying to do is sort the table right to left by the total number of peices of software installed, or, preferably, to sort it by commonalities among the different software apps that are installed.

see the attached image. i've sorted the pivottable so the most common apps went to the top, which gives me a "base install" type view when i look at the software (software titles are in the column on the right) but i'm trying to sort left<-> right in the table so that i can get the machines (top row) not being sorted fromt 1 -> 200+ but rather randomly based on which machines have the most software installed. (ideally, again, i'd like to sort by commonalities, ie; these machines have the same software, these machines have the same software, etc) but it greys out the sort option. is there any way to do this?