This article is part of our VBA Crash Course. Please read the rest of the articles in this series by clicking below links.
- What is VBA & Writing your First VBA Macro in Excel
- Understanding Variables, Conditions & Loops in VBA
- Using Cells, Ranges & Other Objects in your Macros
- Putting it all together – Your First VBA Application using Excel
- My Top 10 Tips for Mastering VBA & Excel Macros
In part 4 of our VBA Crash Course, we are going to create our very first VBA application using what we learned so far.
Our first Application – What is it supposed to do anyway?
Remember the “We Are Nuts” example. We are back to it. This time, we will create a daily sales tracker application that makes your job a breeze. But saying words like breeze when defining your next VBA application is a dangerous thing. So lets list down all the things our little Excel VBA workbook should do.
- The current method of using Inputboxes to capture 24 sale values and any reasons for deviation is tedious. So our application should instead process the values from already entered values and ask for reasons (thru inputbox) only when the sales are too low or too high.
- At the end of processing the sales, we want to see a short summary of how we did for the day. Something like this,
- Once we finish viewing the statistics a snapshot of the daily sales & along with summary statistics should be saved to current folder as PDF for later reference.
Designing our first VBA Application – Key Ingredients:
In this section, let us understand how our application should be designed and what goes in to it.
First, let us look at various things our application need to do, in a schematic. This types of diagrams are called as flow charts.
Key Ingredients of our Daily Sales Tracker Application:
Lets look at each area of our application and understand what VBA technique or statement helps us to do it.
- Process one store sale at a time: This is achieved with the FOR EACH statement [Related: What are VBA loops?]
- Capture reasons for deviation: Lets do InputBox() for this
- Calculate Summaries as we go: Some variables to calculate the summaries as we go. And a few IIF() formulas to help us update the values where needed. (PS: IIF is Inline IF Formula)
- Display Summary Statistics: We will use MessageBox() for this.
- Save a snapshot of the report: This is done by Range.ExportAsFixedFormat() method. [Related: understanding cells, ranges & other VBA objects]
Demo of our Daily Sales Tracker VBA Application
Here is a quick demo of our Daily Sales Tracker Application
Download our Daily Sales Tracker VBA Workbook:
Click here to download the Daily Sales Tracker VBA Workbook. Enable macros, enter some values and play with it.
If you just want to examine code, see this page.
What Next – My top 10 tips for using VBA
In final part of our VBA crash course, Learn my top 10 tips for mastering VBA.
If you have not read, please read the first 3 parts of this series,
- Introduction to Excel VBA – What is it & How to write your first VBA Macro.
- Understanding Variables, Conditions & Loops in VBA
- What are Excel VBA Objects and how to use them?
How do you like this VBA Application? How would you enhance it?
This application is one simple example of what you can do with VBA. Learning how to use Excel & VBA can enable you do several more awesome things at your work & life.
Do you like this application? How would you have designed it? Please share your ideas & tips using comments.
Join Our VBA Classes
We run an online VBA (Macros) Class to make you awesome. This class offers 20+ hours of video content on all aspects of VBA – right from basics to advanced stuff. You can watch the lessons anytime and learn at your own pace. Each lesson offers a download workbook with sample code. If you are interested to learn VBA and become a master in it, please consider joining this course.
21 Responses to “Distinct count in Excel pivot tables”
The distinct count option works well but I have found that if I have a date field and want to group by year, month, etc. that option seems to be disabled. I need to do both, distinct count and group by year/month.
Example data; sales orders with item quantities with dates.
Challenge; sum the item quantities, count the distinct orders and group by month. How do I do this?
Perhaps that's not possible due to the grouping?
@Al... When you use data model based pivots, you cannot group values manually anymore. Why not use Excel 2016's default date grouping option? In this case we have just a few dates, so Excel is not grouping them, but if you have an year's worth of data, when you make the pivot with date in the row label area, Excel automatically groups them. If you have fewer dates or want to use your own grouping, just create a table with all dates, add columns with month, week, year etc. Then connect this table (these types of tables are usually called as calendar tables) to your data on date field as a relationship. Now you can create reports by month, quarter etc easily.
Is this the only way to do it in 2013? I find it rather cumbersome to have to create another data table listing dates with the another column for MONTH() and YEAR() to be able to summarise data for senior level...
I know people find adding calendar tables cumbersome, but it is a best practice and let's you add more layers of analysis quite easily. For example, adding analysis by weekday vs. weekend or by financial quarter or YTD calculations (you would need either Power Pivot DAX or some very carefully setup pivot table value field settings)
I had absolutely no idea this was possible. Very useful, nice work!
Doesn't work for 2010 version though (or at least not my works version)
Hi ,
The post has the following in it :
These instructions work only in Excel 2016, Office 365 and Excel 2013.
when i have 2 different Pivot tables, one without the enabled “Add this data to data model” option, and the other one with it enabled.. is there anyway i can link slicers between them?
if the answer is NO,, what to do ?
Quick note, the “Add this data to data model” option is not available for the Mac version.
perhaps outside scope of this article but I have found when I attempt to create a pivot table from an external data source (connection to a sql view) the "Add this data to data model" becomes greyed out. Anybody experienced and found a solution so I can start getting distinct count in my pivot tables?
Is there a way to still add a calculated field when using distinct count?
I found I can't change the date source after tick the " add this data to the data model", can you help to adv how to change the date source in such case?
Is there a way to update the source once you have added to the data model? I receive a new spreadsheet weekly and would like to update the connection so my tables pull from the new source.
Hi Crhis, I like how you have hulk (superhero) as your avatar. Do you know that there is a superhero in Excel too? It's Power Query. You can use it to solve your problem in a simple click. Here an intro if you need some guidance.
Powerful Introduction to Power Query
A big Thank you. It worked.
Hi, have survey data that I need to analyze but the challenge is that my key fields are showing horizontally. I tried to transpose the fields using Power Query, but unfortunately the new fields are returning same values on a pivot table despite using distinct values
How I can a do a pivot table with discount conts in some columns and then generate shor report filter pages. pls it drives crazy
Hi. Why grand total pivot of distinct count is 13? shouldn't it be 67?
Great Answer! Saved me lots of time!
Thank you!!!
Worked awesome! Thanks!!
Hi Chandoo,
I am using pivot tables for distinct count and now I need to update them with new set of data. But when I update the source data, all the columns and formatting of Pivot table disappears and I need to build it from Scratch.
Is there a possibility that I can update the source data with new rows added and also retain my pivot tables?