The long awaited book from Ken Puls and Miguel Escobar has just been released in digital edition. I read this book over the weekend and wanted to share my experience with anyone considering buying this book or wanting to learn more about Power Query. This book is 220+ pages of […]
Level: Beginners Recently I was working for a client that required the matching of a list of data sent from a customer against some internal business data. This type of data matching is actually an audit process that I would have historically done with MS Access, but it occurred to me […]
Level: Beginners When you write a Power Query workbook in Excel 2013, you are given 4 choices of what to do with results. One of the choices is to load the resulting query directly to the Power Pivot data model. This choice does not exist in Excel 2010. It is […]
As regular readers of my blog would know, I attended the PASS Business Analyst Conference in Santa Clara California this year (April 2015). Here is the link for next year if you are interested. While I was there, I had the pleasure of presenting on one of my favourite topics […]
I was helping a participant at http://powerpivotforum.com.au with a problem. Long story short, she needed to return a table to Excel from a data model – not a Pivot Table. This concept can be a bit strange at first – let me explain. Tables – Not Pivot Tables A Pivot […]
Level: Beginners I helped a couple of people this week on the topic of creating multiple relationships between two tables. There is not a lot of information on this topic on the web so I thought I would write about it here. Power Pivot is not the Same a Relational […]
I have been doing a lot of work with Power Query for clients in recent months. It is not always obvious exactly what you need to do when you start writing a Power Query. As a result I have found that the Power Query workbooks tend to “evolve” during the […]
I am really looking forward with anticipation and excitement about the future of http://PowerBI.com. Microsoft has just released the August 2015 update to Power BI Desktop just 1 month after PowerBI.com becoming generally available (GA). Power BI Desktop used to be called Power BI Designer, and it is the tool […]
Level: Beginners I have blogged before about how to combine multiple files in a folder using Power Query. The way I have always done it is to use a Function, and this is not hard to do if you follow the instructions I provided on my last blog on this topic […]
Level: Beginners One of the topics in my book “Supercharge Power BI: Power BI is Better When you Learn to Write DAX” talks about the optimal shape of your data tables. It is such an important topic that I have decided to share some modified extracts from the book here. When […]
Level: Beginners I have been working with a client here in Sydney were we are producing some Human Resource (HR) reporting tools to analyse what is happening across the business. HR data is quite often very sensitive because it can contain personal information as well as salary information. A lot […]
Level: Beginners I was working with a client recently and was asked a question… “How do I remove duplicate connections in Power Pivot”? I know this is an issue and I specifically advise people to be careful in my training courses and also in my book. But of course once […]
Level: Beginners Edit: March 2021 I love books. Even in this world of the Internet I still like to buy a good book of structured “curated content” that takes the reader on a journey. There are quite a few books out there about the various Microsoft BI products. I plan […]
Level: Beginners It can be reasonably difficult to find the exact download you need for the various Power Products in the Microsoft BI stack. Some of these products (particularly Power Pivot) have a number of versions. This article is provided to help you get the correct download first time. You […]
I was working with a client last week and the unthinkable happened. The client made a simple editing mistake inside the Measure editing dialogue box and it corrupted the Power Pivot workbook. We could still edit the corrupt workbook, but the Pivot Tables stopped working. Oh No!! Now what? He […]
I use Excel 2013 64 bit and sometimes Excel just keeps crashing on me. It used to happen to me a lot more in the past, but after I discovered what was causing the repeat behaviour I have been able to greatly reduce how often this occurs. First a description […]
I have had problems with Power Map not working for some time. I don’t remember when the problem first occurred but it was some time after I installed a batch of updates/patches for Excel. My problem is this (well actually it “was” this) . There are 5 visualisations that come […]
level: Intermediate I have written a couple of posts here and here about the problems and dangers of using Power Query with Power Pivot. Well I am very pleased to say that I now fully understand the problem, how it is caused and how it can be avoided. Edit: Nov […]
Seriously, this has been the best 3 days of my life. Well except for my wedding day of course (sorry honey). There were many great sessions at the PASS BA Conference – about half of them I attended I would classify as “invaluable”. And there were many other sessions I […]
It is late on day 1 of the PASS BA Conference – quite late actually. I really enjoyed the first day and wanted to share some of the highlights with those that couldn’t make it. Keynote Speaker: Carlo Ratti. This man is living the dream! Carlo is an MIT Professor […]