CP018: Dont be a Pivot Table Virgin!

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In the 18th session of Chandoo.org podcast, lets loose your Pivot table virginity.

Note: This is a short format episode. Less time to listen, but just as much awesome.

CP018: Don't be a Pivot Table Virgin! - Introduction to Excel Pivot Tables - Chandoo.org Podcast

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What is in this session?

Pivot tables are a very powerful & quick way to analyze data and get reports from Excel. But surprisingly, not many use them. Today, lets bust your pivot table virginity and understand the concepts like pivoting, values, labels, filters, groups and more.

In this podcast, you will learn,

  • Announcements
  • What is a Pivot Table?
  • Example of business data & reporting needs
  • Terms to understand
    • Labels
    • Values
    • Groups
    • Filters
      • Report filters
      • Slicers
      • Label & Value filters
  • Creating your first pivot table
  • Learning more about pivot tables

Go ahead and listen to the show

 

Links & Resources mentioned in this session:

Excel Pivot Tables – Introduction, Examples, Tutorials & Tips

Advanced Pivot Table concepts

Pivot Table uses & case studies

Books & Courses on Pivot Tables

 

Transcript of this session:

Download this podcast transcript [PDF].

You & Pivot tables… tell me all the racy stories

I lost my pivot table virginity in 2005. But I quickly regained it as I did not use them much for next 3 years. Then I lost it for good and I am glad for that. Now a days, I use pivot tables almost every week. And they give me quick and easy solutions to many analytical problems I face.

What about you? When did you loose your pivot table virginity? How do you use them every day? Please share your tips, stories & experiences in the comments area.

 

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6 Responses to “Make VBA String Comparisons Case In-sensitive [Quick Tip]”

  1. Rick Rothstein (MVP - Excel) says:

    Another way to test if Target.Value equal a string constant without regard to letter casing is to use the StrCmp function...

    If StrComp("yes", Target.Value, vbTextCompare) = 0 Then
    ' Do something
    End If

    • Fares Al-Dhabbi says:

      That's a cool way to compare. i just converted my values to strings and used the above code to compare. worked nicely

      Thanks!

  2. Tim says:

    In case that option just needs to be used for a single comparison, you could use

    If InStr(1, "yes", Target.Value, vbTextCompare) Then
    'do something
    End If

    as well.

  3. Luke M says:

    Nice tip, thanks! I never even thought to think there might be an easier way.

  4. Cyril Z. says:

    Regarding Chronology of VB in general, the Option Compare pragma appears at the very beginning of VB, way before classes and objects arrive (with VB6 - around 2000).

    Today StrComp() and InStr() function offers a more local way to compare, fully object, thus more consistent with object programming (even if VB is still interpreted).

    My only question here is : "what if you want to binary compare locally with re-entering functions or concurrency (with events) ?". This will lead to a real nightmare and probably a big nasty mess to debug.

    By the way, congrats for you Millions/month visits 🙂

  5. Bhavik says:

    This is nice article.
    I used these examples to help my understanding. Even Instr is similar to Find but it can be case sensitive and also case insensitive.
    Hope the examples below help.

    Public Sub CaseSensitive2()

    If InStr(1, "Look in this string", "look", vbBinaryCompare) = 0 Then
    MsgBox "woops, no match"
    Else
    MsgBox "at least one match"
    End If

    End Sub

    Public Sub CaseSensitive()

    If InStr("Look in this string", "look") = 0 Then
    MsgBox "woops, no match"
    Else
    MsgBox "at least one match"
    End If

    End Sub
    Public Sub NotCaseSensitive()
    'doing alot of case insensitive searching and whatnot, you can put Option Compare Text
    If InStr(1, "Look in this string", "look", vbTextCompare) = 0 Then
    MsgBox "woops, no match"
    Else
    MsgBox "at least one match"
    End If

    End Sub

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