Here is something annoying with Excel.
Open any Excel file with few columns of data. Hide some of those columns (select the columns and press CTRL+0). Now, copy a few rows of data. Paste it else where. Excel will paste the values in hidden columns too. We thought Excel would omit the values in hidden columns.
What the filter Excel?!? I thought we were friends, but you annoy me with some of these quirks.
How to copy and paste just visible cells only?
There are two ways to do this.
1. Select visible cells, Copy and Paste
- Select the entire range you need to copy.
- Press F5, this opens Go to dialog. Click on Special button.
- Now select visible cells option. You can use the short cut sequence – F5 ALT SY to do all this.
- Now press CTRL + C
- Then go to target sheet and press CTRL + V to paste.
While this method works, it is too long and if you need to copy and paste several times, then it can be annoying.
Related: More about Go to special
This is where the second trick comes handy.
2. Cheat Excel in to copying just visible cells
If your source data is filtered, then when you copy, Excel copies visible cells only. But how to filter when you need to see all the data. Simple, we cheat.
- Go the end of your data and type something like “X” in the blank cell beneath.
- Now apply filters to the data. Press CTRL+Shift+L to do this.
- Then filter the new value you added in step 1.
- Copy now.
- When you paste, Excel will paste just visible cells. Viola!!!
How do you copy paste visible cells?
We are almost at the end. Let me confess. I never had this problem. I know about Go to Special > Visible cells and use it if needed. But Jo (my wife) faced this issued yesterday and called me to ask how to copy visible cells. When I told her the option about visible cells thru Goto special, she is not all that thrilled, so I got thinking. I think the filter approach is better because you just do what you normally do – which is Ctrl C, Ctrl V.
What about you? Have you ever had to paste visible cells only? How did you deal with that? Share you tips and experience in comments section.
And oh yeah, Check out our quick tips section for some knock-your-socks-off level of awesomeness.
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...