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Our VBA Class enrollments will be closed this Friday (Sep 16). If you want to learn VBA & Excel, please consider joining our course. More than 120 students have already joined us in the second batch and are learning VBA as you read this.
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Moving on…,
As you may know, Chandoo.org offers quite a few Online Excel training programs. Over the last few weeks, many of you have emailed us and asked which training program is best for your situation. This got me thinking. “It should be easy for YOU to know what is best.”
So today morning, I locked my office room, took out my drawing pad and designed the most comprehensive course recommendation engine. It starts with a survey asking you 12 detailed questions. Then we make you go thru an Excel exam with 15 questions to test your proficiency with the tool. Then the engine would do a lot of calculations and finally recommend a list of training programs that suit you.
Then I threw it out.
Because, it was too complex.
Instead, I made a beautiful Excel workbook that asks you only 2 questions and tells you which training programs are best for you.
How our Training Recommender works?
- You tell us about your Excel skill level
- You tell us why you use Excel
- You get a list of recommended courses
- There is no step 4. I just like 4 bullet points for every thing.
How to get your recommendations?
Simple. Click here to download the tool. Open it using Excel 2007 or above. Just answer the 2 questions to see your recommendations.
How does the Training Recommender Work?
I made a short video explaining how the workbook is constructed. Watch it below or on our Youtube Channel.
Do you like the Training Recommender?
I really enjoyed constructing this. It shows what is possible in Excel.
What about you? Do you like this?
Similar Articles & Ideas
Since I run a small business, I always look for ways to use Excel to enhance areas of my business. Here are some more ideas that you may find helpful.
- Quotation Template made using Excel
- Product Catalog using Excel
- Is Excel School right for me? Assessment Tool
Last but not least…
This is week is the last week to join our ongoing VBA Classes. Next batch will be in 2012.
So go ahead and enroll here.
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...