I couldnt really get enough time to sit and write a lengthy post on HK till now. The visit has been completely hectic whether its the meetings with the client or roaming the bustling Hong Kong streets. Finally I am coming back to India today. Fortunately I came a little early to the airport (well a lot earlier) so taking the time out to write this post.
The most beautiful part about HK is that it is made for the tourists, whether you are here to do business or just visit. To start with you dont have to apply for a visa before coming here. You get 14 days business visa if you have an invitation letter. I guess its the same for visitors as well.
The transportation modes are just as good. Be it a ferry from Central to Kowloon or the MTR from Casueway bay to Admiralty or minibus from Whampoa to Tsim Sha Tsui or Airport express from Tsing Yi to Airport, they are all made for YOU.
Upon landing right at the airport you can purchase an octopus card, which is a multi purpose smart card. Then whenever you board a public transportation system you just need to tap the card to make the payment. The card works in most of the stores and restaurants as well. If you are out of balance, just walk to an add value machine and feed the HK dollors to it and you are done. Its really that simple.
The place is expensive though, especially if you are planning to stay in a hotel get ready to pay at least 60$ a day for a double-bathroom sized room. Food ain’t great either, of course I have limited myself to chicken and vegetarian stuff alone. I have tried Chinese food on my first day, roasted chicken wings with rice noodles, the noodles tasted like egg white mixed with salt water. Dont even bother to ask about the chicken, well lets just say that may be that is how chicken will taste when you eat with chop sticks.
Apart from causeway bay and tsim sha tsui areas, I didnt really get to see much of HK. But these are the 2 main areas where tourists flock. Around these places there are just too many currency exchange shops, probably 1 for every 10 normal shops. That alone shows how keep HK is about tourism. Always negotiate the exchange rate, never take the value mentioned in the board, a little trick I have learned during my stay here. Talking about exchange, HK has pegged its dollar at 7.8(approx) wrt to USD. But in the market the exchange rate can vary from 7.05 to 7.75 depending on where you change.
I have realized that clothes are cheaper here, mainly due to extremely fashion conscious people living here. You just have to take MTR for a couple of times to see all possible kinds of dresses / hair styles / nail colors / bags / watches / jewelry. But other fashion accessories like watches, footwear, leather goods aren’t so cheap. I could buy a 19″ wide LCD monitor for the price of a branded watch.
The best thing for me is that, there is are tons of free wi-fi hot spots all over HK. Everyday I would come home and connect the laptop to one of the free networks and call my folks back home. It was so simple and fun.
Overll my trip to HK proved to fun and fulfilling. I have finished the task for which I am here and did get a chance to roam around a little bit. But I would love to be back here for a longer and relaxed visit, the reason why I am not returning my octopus card at the airport.
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?