It is megaphone time at Chandoo.org. I have a few quick announcements about upcoming training programs & other interesting stuff. Just read on 🙂
1. VBA Classes 2nd Batch from September 5th
Some of you know that Chandoo.org runs an online VBA Class. We are about to finish the classes for first batch and now gearing for 2nd batch. The enrollments for this program are open from September 5th, Monday. For more information, download our course brochure. If you want to join this class, sign-up for our news-letter and I will update you with more details in next few weeks.
2. Good news for our Indian Customers – Now Accepting Credit Cards, Debit Cards, Net-banking and more!
I have a very good news for our customers & readers from India. Finally, I got an Indian payment gateway account so that you can pay for Chandoo.org products (PM Templates, Excel School & Upcoming VBA Classes) in Indian rupee using credit cards, debit cards, net banking & more options. To purchase any of our products click below links:
3. New Excel Formula Crash Course – Coming this Wednesday, 17 August
Excel formulas have confused one too many of us. It took me more than an year to understand simple formulas like IF & VLOOKUP and use them effectively. That is why, I created this course. It is easy to follow, simple to digest and yet power-packed with lots of ideas & information. The aim of this course is to make you a master of Excel formulas in 31 days. The course has 6 modules,
- Formula Basics
- Lookup Formulas
- Text Formulas
- Date & Time Formulas
- Advanced Formulas
- Errors, Auditing & More
For more information, please watch this short video:
4. Excel School Prices Going up!
I have created Excel School online training program in Jan 2010. Ever since, we have trained more than 1500 people thru this program. Every week, I get emails from our students telling me how much they have gained from this program and how they are able to impress everyone at their workplace. During the same time, I have been adding new content to this program to make it perfect. And now time has come to hike the course fees to match the value it delivers. Starting Monday, August 29, Excel School prices will be going up. See the below table to understand new prices. And join us now if you want to save money.
| Option | Old Price | New Price | |
| Excel School ONLINE Option | $67 | $97 | Join Now |
| Excel School DOWNLOAD Option | $97 | $147 | Join Now |
| Excel School DASHBOARDS Option | $197 | $247 | Join Now |
5. Recommended Live Training: Excel Power Analyst Bootcamp in Washington DC, USA on September 19th
My good friend, teacher & fellow Excel blogger, Mike Alexander runs Excel Power Analyst Bootcamps every year. This year, he is doing it on September 19 & 20 in Alexandria, VA (few minutes away from Washington DC). Now, few days back, Mike emailed and asked if I can suggest this program to my readers. I agree with pretty much everything Mike does (except the heart-attack prone bacon recipes he suggests). So here I am recommending his course. I have attended a few webinars Mike did and I can vouch for the amazing knowledge he shares with us. He is a natural teacher and you are going to love the time you spend with him. So if you happen to be near Alexandria (VA) and want to learn Excel, then go for his bootcamp.
Click here to sign-up for Mike’s Excel Power Analyst Bootcamp.
PS: I do not get any money out of this recommendation. However, Mike promised to do a guest lecture in our upcoming VBA Class. But I would have recommended this bootcamp even otherwise 🙂
End of Announcements!
I wish you an awesome week ahead 🙂
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...