Watching the Olympic athletes run & jump all I could think of is,
- What should I eat to jump & sprint like that?
- How come I never heard about steeple chase?
- Should we really have 3 bullet points in all lists?
But I digress. Coming back, when watching one of those hurdles events, I got an idea as sharp as Chinese table tennis team.
Why not create a hurdles game in Excel to measure how good you are with keyboard?
So ladies & gentleman, let me present you our very own Olympics hurdle run.
Excel Hurdles Challenge
What is it?
This is a simple spreadsheet based game. Your objective is to reach from Start cell to End cell in shortest possible time, ONLY USING KEYBOARD.
Hurdles challenge eh?!? What rules I must obey?
- The first rule of hurdles challenge is you use ONLY KEYBOARD.
- You must touch cells on the red trail only.
- You are not allowed to land on blank cells unless.
- For each violation of above 3 rules, you get 1 second penalty.
- That is all. Happy jumping & sprinting.
Download Excel Hurdles Challenge
Click here to download the challenge workbook.
Just enable macros and get jumping.
Note: this workbook is tested in Excel 2007, 2010 and 2013 and works ok.
How fast did you go?
When I tried it first time, I got 23 seconds. But after a bit of practice, I got to 17 seconds and no penalties. While I am no Usain Bolt, I feel pretty happy with result.
What about you? How fast can you go? Go ahead and take the hurdles challenge and post your time in comments.
Once you reach your personal best, go enjoy the weekend. When we meet next week, I will have something awesome, something new and something smart waiting for you.
Struggling with the hurdles? You should learn a few keyboard shortcuts.
Check out below pages to pick up some keyboard shortcuts. Once done, go back and take the challenge.
- Comprehensive list of keyboard shortcuts
- 10 Keyboard shortcuts I can’t live without
- 100 Excel tips, tricks & shortcuts
PS: If you have more time to kill, check out these Excel games.
13 Responses to “Using pivot tables to find out non performing customers”
To avoid the helper column and the macro, I would transpose the data into the format shown above (Name, Year, Sales). Now I can show more than one year, I can summarize - I can do many more things with it. ASAP Utilities (http://www.asap-utilities.com) has a new experimental feature that can easily transpose the table into the correct format. Much easier in my opinion.
David
Of course with alternative data structure, we can easily setup a slicer based solution so that everything works like clockwork with even less work.
David, I was just about to post the same!
In Contextures site, I remember there's a post on how to do that. Clearly, the way data is layed out on the very beginning is critical to get the best results, and even you may thinkg the original layout is the best way, it is clearly not. And that kind of mistakes are the ones I love ! because it teaches and trains you to avoid them, and how to think on the data structure the next time.
Eventually, you get to that place when you "see" the structure on the moment the client tells you the request, and then, you realized you had an ephiphany, that glorious moment when data is no longer a mistery to you!!!
Rgds,
Chandoo,
If the goal is to see the list of customers who have not business from yearX, I would change the helper column formula to :
=IF(selYear="all",sum(C4:M4),sum(offset(C4:M4,,selyear-2002,1,columns(C4:M4)-selyear+2002)))This formula will sum the sales from Selected Year to 2012.
JMarc
If you are already using a helper column and the combox box runs a macro after it changes, why not just adjust the macro and filter the source data?
Regards
I gotta say, it seems like you are giving 10 answers to 10 questions when your client REALLY wants to know is: "What is the last year "this" customer row had a non-zero Sales QTY?... You're missing the forest for the trees...
Change the helper column to:
=IFERROR(INDEX(tblSales[[#Headers],[Customer name]:[Sales 2012]],0,MATCH(9.99999999999999E+307,tblSales[[#This Row],[Customer name]:[Sales 2012]],1)),"NO SALES")
And yes, since I'm matching off of them for value, I would change the headers to straight "2002" instead of "Sales 2002" but you sort the table on the helper column and then and there you can answer all of your questions.
Hi thanks for this. Just can't figure out how you get the combo box to control the pivot table. Can you please advise?
Cheers
@Kevin.. You are welcome. To insert a combo box, go to Developer ribbon > Insert > form controls > combo box.
For more on various form controls and how to use them, please read this: http://chandoo.org/wp/2011/03/30/form-controls/
Thanks Chandoo. But I know how to insert a combobox, I was more referring to how does in control the year in the pivot table? Or is this obvious? I note that if I select the Selected Year from the PivotTable Field List it says "the field has no itens" whereas this would normally allow you to change the year??
Thanks again
worked it out thanks...
when =data!Q2 changes it changes the value in column N:N and then when you do a refreshall the pivottable vlaues get updated
Still not sure why PivotTable Field List says “the field has no itens"?? I created my own pivot table and could not repeat that.
Hi, I put the sales data in range(F5:P19) and added a column D with the title 'Last sales in year'. After that, in column D for each customer, the simple formula
=2000+MATCH(1000000,E5:P5)
will provide the last year in which that particular customer had any sales, which can than easily be managed by autofilter.
Somewhat longer but perhaps a bit more solid (with the column titles in row 4):
=RIGHT(INDEX($F$4:$P$19,1,MATCH(1000000,F5:P5)),4)
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