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 […]
Well it is the end of day 0 – the pre-conference sessions – prior to the commencement of the actual PASS Business Analytics Conference here in Santa Clara tomorrow. It was hard to pick which of the 4 pre-con sessions to attend but I ended up choosing Chandoo’s session titled […]
I am sitting here in San Jose (Santa Clara actually) ready to attend the PASS Business Analyst Conference. It was hard to get those lyrics out of my head when I was flying to San Jose, but I am sure I will have a clear head once the action begins (I […]
I love VBA for Excel. VBA can automate tasks that you use often, making the process faster, easier and more accurate to execute. I like writing VBA for myself to solve my own problems, I like sharing what I write with others, and I like taking the VBA that others […]
Excel is a bit like a drug for me – the more I use Excel, the more I need to use Excel. I work on a lot of Power Pivot workbooks these days and sometimes these workbooks need to run a refresh or recalc that can take a bit of […]
I was recently asked by an Industry Excel expert what made Excel such a compelling product for Business Intelligence, Reporting and Analysis. As many people know, I have worked in IT as well as commercial business roles over the years, so I have seen ‘both sides’ of the story and […]
Edit 16 May 2015: I now know the exact cause and cure for this problem. See this post here This backup tip is still useful though. This is a follow up to this post where I talked about Power Query and warned to take frequent backups when editing your Power […]
I have come across this problem a few times recently. There was no immediately obvious solution that worked at first. I knew what I wanted to do but I couldn’t get it to work – but now I have a solution and I want to share it for the benefit […]
Microsoft has just released the March ‘15 update to Power Query. On the official blog, MS called out 3 things: Performance improvements Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online connector New transformations Performance improvements? You have my attention. I have found that Power Query (and Power Pivot for that matter) are both slow […]
I’m really excited to be speaking at this year’s PASS Business Analyst Conference in San Jose California. I will be sharing what I have learnt in my time working as BI Director at The Coca-Cola Company about how to share Power Pivot (and other Excel) Workbooks with people that simply want […]
I wrote a blog post on PowerPivotPro.com last week on how to create a standard Power Pivot calendar using Power Query – from scratch. I was doing some research this morning on how I could extend this concept to create a 4/4/5 Calendar (which is often used in the Retail […]
As most subscribers of my blog would already know, I am a professional trainer of Power Pivot here in Australia. I do a lot of work for Corporations at their own premises with their own PC equipment. Not every company has made the move to Excel 2013, and in fact […]