Ok, Coffee can be one of them, but may be after the 3rd mug of the day, you will ask the question, “so, what are the productivity secrets of Excel 2007?”.
That, my friend, is the reason why you should put aside the mug and read this post carefully. The post is pure filtered decoction of tips you must sip.
if you like this post (or for that matter if you like coffee) please add it to your delicious bookmarks or stumble it or tweet it.
Thanks, You are beautiful.
Turn on the Clipboard pane, Copy paste like there is no tomorrow
We all swear by ctrl+c, ctrl+v. A large part of my MBA case studies were submitted intime thanks only to the awesome clipboard. But do you know that you can turn on the clipboard feature in Excel 2007 in a full panel view and use it to speed up the copy paste activity.
Hold Down ALT to see what keyboard shortcuts are available, press key and you will see more
All you have to do is hold the ALT key down. And I can bet that you will learn a fun and simple keyboard shortcut for something that you use everyday. What more, in Excel 2007 you can use most of the Excel 2003 (and earlier) keyboard shortcuts.
Lock a feature to Boost up your performance, for eg. lock format painter and paste formats everywhere
When you need to perform certain action several times, like for eg. if you want to paste the same formatting over 40 different cells, you can lock the format painter by double clicking on it. See the screencast to understand how it works.
(When you can inserting shapes etc, you can use “lock drawing mode” option from right click menu)
Make your charts and tables go everywhere, copy them as pictures
When you copy a chart / table of cells as picture, they take less space and look lot better when pasted.
Add Invisible / Hidden features to your Quick Access Toolbar
You can add hidden features of excel 2007 like camera tool etc. to the quick access toolbar (the tools that you usually see next to office button). Just click on the office button > Excel options > Customize and select “commands not in the ribbon”. These are the features that are not usually shown on ribbon (some of them are shown when you lets say select a chart or table or something like that).
Move the Quick Access Toolbar down to save mouse travel time
I think that title says it all. See the image.
Always save the files in Excel 2003-97 compatible mode
Very useful if your colleagues / clients are still using old versions. Just go to Office button > Excel Options > Save and change the file type to Excel 2003-97.
Click on the corner of a group of Ribbon Icons to launch its UI
This is not applicable for all groups. But for some groups of icons you see a little squarish icon on the bottom right corner. Just hit it to launch a friendly office 2003ish looking dialog to make changes to the settings etc.
Add chart related options to Quick Access Toolbar to save time
If you make a lot of charts, then it pays to add the chart related options like “adding error bars”, “adding axis” etc. to the quick access toolbar. Then you can press ALT+number to activate this feature and work with it without even moving your mouse.
Create a named range quickly by typing the name in the corner of formula bar
You can quickly create a named range by selecting a bunch of cells and typing the name in the formula bar’s left hand corner where usually cell address’ is displayed.
See the screencast.
BONUS: Enable Developer Ribbon Toolbar in Excel 2007
If you in to mochas and trying to explore macros, then this one is for you. Enable the Developer toolbar from Excel options > Popular and you can play with all those form controls and macros.
More Tips and Tricks on using Microsoft Excel
Did you enjoy the post? Do you want more ? Well, it is not coffee, so you can consume as much as you want. Start with these and see where your mouse takes you.
Excel Productivity – Advanced Tips & Tricks
Excel can be Exciting – 15 hacks you don’t know
100 Excel Tips, Tricks and Resources
Sign up today and recieve an E-book with 95 Excel & Charting Tips
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?