If you don’t want to suffer from premature ageing, the most important thing is to move with the times and not get set in your ways. This might be a traumatic thought for Excel users who have been so attached to the Vlookup Function for the past 20 years that giving it up might be like losing a beloved relative. Why is the Vlookup Function “so last year”? Well, one of the best new features in Excel 2013 is the… Read More
THE BURNINGSUIT BLOG
By Stuart Box
Power BI in Practice Power BI Resources 2nd February 2015
Power BI preview
Last week Microsoft made several important announcements about Power BI, you can read the whole thing on the Microsoft Official Blog I've taken a look at what this means for those of us in the UK working with Power BI. It's always interesting working with the latest version of Microsoft's new tools, but sometimes you have to tread a little carefully. First Things First - A Price Cut Probably the most important thing for those contemplating Power BI, or those already using… Read More
By Stuart Box
Power BI Resources 14th January 2015Excel Power Pivot – Just how big is BIG?
As I started working with Power Pivot and Power BI I was aware that it allowed large amounts of data to be manipulated by Excel, but just how large? and how does it do that ? Just how big was the "Big Data" being talked about. I spent a little while digging to find the answers. I was confused, how could Excel handle "Millions of rows"? Did the Excel Rows and Columns limits increase to new limits or was there… Read More
By Stuart Box
Excel Office 2013 Office 365 Power BI Resources 2nd January 2015Microsoft 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 2013PowerPivot 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 2013PowerPivot 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 2013PowerPivot – 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 2013PowerPivot – 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 2013PowerPivot – 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 2013PowerPivot – 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
