After seeing Andrew’s simple excel based check-list I got this idea of preparing a simple To-Do list application using excel.
Since most of us use Excel on day to day basis, why not use it as a productivity application as well by keeping track of all the things we must do (TO DO List). When we have finished a task, we can mark it as “Done” in the sheet and it will be removed. See below:
Click here to download the Simple To Do List application in Excel
How to use Simple To do List?
- Open the downloaded workbook. It may ask for enabling macros, please say “Yes”
- Start entering your to do tasks in the table. See below:
- Now, leave the spreadsheet here and go get some of the things done!
- When you return mark the items you have finished as done. See below:
- Finally once a day or so, click on the “Remove done items” button. This will remove all the to do list entries with “Done” as the status. Please be aware that once you remove the items you can never get them back. See below:
- That is all, this spreadsheet to do list is soo simple that it leaves you tons of time to actually get some of the things done.
How the Simple To do List works?
The key functionality of this excel based to do list lies in the “remove done items” button. When you click it a VBA macro runs in the background and checks tabular area where you have entered to do items for anything with “done” status. If it finds any, the code will remove those items and move up the remaining ones accordingly. Click here to see the VBA Macro code.
Download the to do list excel workbook and become productive
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8 Responses to “Pivot Tables from large data-sets – 5 examples”
Do you have links to any sites that can provide free, large, test data sets. Both large in diversity and large in total number of rows.
Good question Ron. I suggest checking out kaggle.com, data.world or create your own with randbetween(). You can also get a complex business data-set from Microsoft Power BI website. It is contoso retail data.
Hi Chandoo,
I work with large data sets all the time (80-200MB files with 100Ks of rows and 20-40 columns) and I've taken a few steps to reduce the size (20-60MB) so they can better shared and work more quickly. These steps include: creating custom calculations in the pivot instead of having additional data columns, deleting the data tab and saving as an xlsb. I've even tried indexmatch instead of vlookup--although I'm not sure that saved much. Are there any other tricks to further reduce the file size? thanks, Steve
Hi Steve,
Good tips on how to reduce the file size and / or process time. Another thing I would definitely try is to use Data Model to load the data rather than keep it in the file. You would be,
1. connect to source data file thru Power Query
2. filter away any columns / rows that are not needed
3. load the data to model
4. make pivots from it
This would reduce the file size while providing all the answers you need.
Give it a try. See this video for some help - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u7bpysO3FQ
Normally when Excel processes data it utilizes all four cores on a processor. Is it true that Excel reduces to only using two cores When calculating tables? Same issue if there were two cores present, it would reduce to one in a table?
I ask because, I have personally noticed when i use tables the data is much slower than if I would have filtered it. I like tables for obvious reasons when working with datasets. Is this true.
John:
I don't know if it is true that Excel Table processing only uses 2 threads/cores, but it is entirely possible. The program has to be enabled to handle multiple parallel threads. Excel Lists/Tables were added long ago, at a time when 2 processes was a reasonable upper limit. And, it could be that there simply is no way to program table processing to use more than 2 threads at a time...
When I've got a large data set, I will set my Excel priority to High thru Task Manager to allow it to use more available processing. Never use RealTime priority or you're completely locked up until Excel finishes.
That is a good tip Jen...