By Stuart Box

Excel Office 2013 Office 365 Power BI Resources 2nd January 2015

Microsoft Power BI for Office 365, this is not your Father’s Spreadsheet

Microsoft Power BI for Office 365 is a fusion of tools designed to provide data analysis, visualisation, ad-hoc query and sharing of Excel data and spreadsheets. It brings together the "Power Tools" for Excel, Power Query, Power Pivot, Power View and Power Map, with cloud-based online facilities which allow you to view, store, share and query the dashboards you create with Excel and the Power tools. It is not simply an add-on to Excel, but a radical enhancement of the… Read More

By Stuart Box

Excel Power BI Resources PowerPivot 20th June 2013

PowerPivot 6 – The Joy of Sets

Time Intelligence Functions One of the most powerful features of PowerPivot is the ability to analysis your data across time periods.  To use the Time Intelligence functions, you must have a table in the PowerPivot window that comprises all the dates from the date range of your data.  For example, my wine sales range is between 1st September 2010 and the current date.  Therefore, I’ve created a Date Table that lists all the dates between these two dates.  I’ve also… Read More

By Stuart Box

Excel Power BI Resources PowerPivot 10th June 2013

PowerPivot 5 – Measure for Measure

“Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.” ― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure Creating Measures A Measure is a formula that is created specifically for use in the Values area of a PivotTable (or PivotChart), very similar to Calculated Fields in a normal Excel Pivot Table.  However, in PowerPivot a Measure uses DAX functions.  The Values area of a Pivot Table will always require some kind of aggregation and… Read More

By Stuart Box

Excel Power BI Resources PowerPivot 30th May 2013

PowerPivot – 4

Calculations in PowerPivot PowerPivot doesn’t use Excel’s formulas or functions but uses its own special expressions, known as DAX (Data Analysis Expressions). DAX Functions are different from Excel Functions in the following ways:- DAX doesn’t reference single cells or ranges of cells (e.g. B1 or C2:D11). A DAX function always references a complete column or a table. If you want to use only particular values from a table or column, you add filters to the formula. DAX includes functions that… Read More

By Stuart Box

PowerPivot 13th May 2013

PowerPivot – 3

Continuing with our look at PowerPivot. You should now have PowerPivot installed as an add-on to Excel, and configured some data connections to it. My most recent blog post showed how we can create relationships between disparate data imported or connected to PowerPivot. Now, with some data available, we can start to create a Pivot Table. Creating PivotTables with PowerPivot To create a PivotTable from the tables in the PowerPivot window, you can either use the icon on the PowerPivot tab… Read More

By Stuart Box

PowerPivot 8th May 2013

PowerPivot – 2

If you've been following these blog posts, you'll have PowerPivot installed in Excel (click here to read PowerPivot 1). Now we'll start to get some data into PowerPivot, and as you'll see this is one of the most powerful ways you can join together disparate data. Once PowerPivot is installed, click on the PowerPivot Window Icon on the Excel ribbon. This opens the PowerPivot client window, a separate window that controls PowerPivots's access to data. From here you can import data into PowerPivot, as… Read More

By Stuart Box

Excel PowerPivot 2nd May 2013

PowerPivot – 1

We've started doing a lot of Training in Microsoft PowerPivot for Excel. This is a wonderful add-on to Excel that allows you to collect data from varying locations and combine than with a PivotTable or Chart. PowerPivot is often used to build Business Intelligence Dashboards in Excel. We've found that people who attend our Training get really excited in what PowerPivot can do. But the first question to answer is "How do I get PowerPivot for Excel". The answer depends… Read More

By Stuart Box

Office 2013 30th April 2013

Ten Tips for Office 2013

Microsoft Office 2013 is here Available in several different versions, Office 2013 is part of the Office 365 subscriptions as well as a stand-alone product. Users will find it's a big change if they move from Office 2003 or earlier, but if they've been introduced to Office 2007 or 2010 then the upgrade isn't too scary. We can now offer any of our Microsoft courses in Office 2013 and have developed specific Office 2013 Upgrade Courses to help you over… Read More

By Stuart Box

FAQ Learning Training 11th February 2013

Six questions to answer before you book training

I've blogged before about the questions to ask a potential Training Provider, but I thought I'd list six questions that any Company or Organisation that seriously wants to get the best out of Training should be asking before going ahead. Of course, there's a dual benefit here, the answers to these questions will help you understand your Training need, and also help any Training company understand just what you want. It's very common that a department, group, or individual will… Read More

By Stuart Box

Office 365 Virtual Classrooms Webex 21st January 2013

Work is an activity, not a place

Back in the 'naughties' I worked with UK Online for Business, encouraging companies to take up Broadband internet access. One of the phrases we used then was "Work is an activity not a place" explaining how Broadband ADSL would enable us to work from anywhere that was broadband enabled, reducing the need to travel or commute to designated "Places of Work". We were partly right, but the message was a little too soon. Mobile computing was in its infancy, laptops… Read More

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