On Jan 4, I received this email from Matt,
Thank you for sharing all of your knowledge on such an incredible website. Your site has such an incredible array of useful tips, tricks, and solutions to every day problems, I don’t know what I would do without it! It’s the only place I go to look for help when I’m stumped with excel. Thanks to you, I’ve become an “excel wizard,” and have been able to show coworkers mind blowing new things with excel they never knew about. I even taught a 4 week training class at my old job! Over the past 3 years, tips I’ve learned from your site have been appreciated all the way in Seattle, Washington, at an internet marketing company, a newspaper, and a food website.
While the mail is flattering, I was more interested to know how Matt uses Excel in his day to day work. So I asked him to write a small guest post sharing his experiences. He gladly accepted the offer and here were are, with a post full of tips & ideas to help you. I am sure many business analysts, analysts and managers out there can co-relate to Matt’s experience.
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Guest Article by Matt Decuir
At Allrecipes.com we use excel for a variety of purposes. Analyzing site trends, forecasting traffic, charts, dashboards, and slide shows; you name it, we use excel for it. That’s why Chandoo’s tips have been so helpful – because we use excel every day. Thanks to chandoo.org, I’ve developed a reputation as an “excel wizard” and even taught a 4 week excel training class!
Most of your colleagues are probably like mine – they’ve got a pretty good understanding of excel. They use formulas and charts regularly, occasionally experimenting with Pivot Tables. As a Chandoo reader, you’re probably already an excel expert or well on your way to becoming one. But even more important than your excel expertise is the ability to communicate helpful tips to others. Regardless of your audience, complicated formulas can be difficult to explain. If you can point out tips that are within your colleagues’ comprehension, you will quickly become an excel rock star. The trick is to know your audience.
Here are a few simple tips that will wow your colleagues:
- Autofill: Instead of wasting time scrolling and dragging a formula all the way down the page, your colleagues will be amazed that double clicking on the AutoFill icon will automatically do it for them.
- One co-worker affectionately calls this the “double click trick“
- Transpose: Need to change how your data is oriented? Not sure exactly how to phrase what you’re trying to do? Just Paste Special and check the Transpose box and your data will magically be transformed from horizontal to vertical.
- Keyboard Shortcuts: Scrolling is the enemy. Nobody wants to waste their whole day scrolling to the bottom of a spreadsheet. Here are a few keyboard shortcuts that will save time:
- CTRL + down arrow:To get to the bottom row of your data set
- CTRL +up arrow: To get the top row of your data set
- CTRL + right arrow: To get to the last column of your data set
- CTRL + left arrow: To get to the first column of your data set
- CTRL + Home: To get to the first cell (top left) in your data set
- CTRL + End: To get to the last cell (bottom right) in your data set
- Bonus: Holding SHIFT down while using any of the above shortcuts will select that entire range
- Charts: Charts are confusing. They never do what you want them to do. Most people have used charts before, but are in no way experts. You’ll win points if you can explain how to:
- Add a secondary axis
- Create a combination chart with both bar and line graphs
- Pivot Tables: Pivot Tables are daunting to most people who don’t use them regularly. If you can help your colleagues navigate the treacherous waters of Pivot Tables, they will definitely appreciate it. Keep it simple though, as the flexibility can get overwhelming to new users very quickly.
- Start by creating a Pivot Table to answer 1 question. Then explain how to filter and sort the data. By doing this, your colleagues will slowly warm to Pivot Tables, making them less overwhelming.
Now that you’ve got some simple tips in your repertoire, here are the formulas and tools I use the most:
Lookup and Text Formulas:
- SUMIFS, AVERAGEIFS, and COUNTIFS: Like SUMIF on steroids. Useful for looking up any non-text values with multiple criteria
- Great for recreating the functionality of a Pivot, but allowing you to format the output however you would like
- Makes month over month calculations extremely easy, especially with named cells.
- VLOOKUP, INDEX, and MATCH: Useful for looking up any text values
- Always make sure to end your VLOOKUP with FALSE to return the exact match
- IFERROR: Replaces errors with a different value
- i.e. IFERROR(A1/B1,0) replaces errors with zeroes
- LEFT, MID, RIGHT, and SEARCH: Useful for parsing specific parts out of URLs
Date Formulas:
- TODAY(): Automatically calculates today’s date
- DATE: Useful for calculating specific days in the year
- i.e. DATE(YEAR(TODAY()),1,1) calculates the first day of the year (“1/1/2011”)
- EDATE: Increments a date by X number of months. Negative numbers also work to go backwards.
- i.e. EDATE(A1,1) increments a date by 1 month (“2/1/2011”)
- TEXT: Converts a value to any date format you would like
- i.e. TEXT(A1,”dddd”) converts a date into day of the week (“Monday”)
- i.e. TEXT(A1,”mmmm”) converts a date into a month (“January”)
- WEEKDAY: Returns the day number in the week.
- i.e. WEEKDAY($A1,2)>5 returns TRUE for weekends
Charts:
- Dynamic Chart Ranges: Use OFFSET and named ranges to only chart cells that have values. This saves time because you don’t have to update chart data ranges each month
- Alternatively, returning errors (#N/A) when values are blank will also exclude empty cells from line and bar charts
- Rolling Chart Data Ranges: Set a static number of months and use SUMIFS to populate values automatically
- Dynamic Chart Data Labels: Great for showing month over month % change, instead of default data labels
Other Tools:
- Named ranges: Useful for referencing calculated dates, lookup formulas, data validation lists, creating dashboards, etc…
- CTRL + F3: shows all the named ranges in your spreadsheet
- Data Validation: For creating drop down lists
- Named ranges allow you to reference a list of values in a separate tab
- Conditional Formatting: For formatting everything!
- Highlight Cell Rules: Highlights positive values in green, negative values in red
- Custom Formula Rules: Useful for shading weekends in gray when looking at a whole month’s data by day (i.e. WEEKDAY($A1,2)>5)
- Data Bars: Shows a tiny bar chart within the cell. Good for showing trends within a data table
I hope these tips help you become a rock star among your friends and colleagues!
Matt Decuir
Business Analyst, Allrecipes.com
(decuirm at gmail dot com)
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Thank you Matt
Thanks for sharing your experiences and ideas so openly. This proves that to be a successful analyst, good understanding of numbers and tools is necessary.
If you like this article, say thanks to Matt. Also tell us how you are using Excel to become awesome at work. Go ahead and leave a comment.
41 Responses to “How to use Excel Data Model & Relationships”
Data is Excel 2013 behaves so much like a OLAP cube when using with PivotTables. And this is actually wow. Consider learning not just DAX but MDX too 🙂 Happy Excel
@Chandoo.. Have a nice and safe time in US. Best Wishes. And when they are publishing your interview in Entrepreneur 🙂
I have been using PowerPivot in Excel 2010. My understanding was (via PowerPivot Pro blog) that Power Pivot would NOT be available in Excel 2013 in all versions; my recollection is that it was only going to be available in certain enterprise subscription editions. Thus, for individual users, it will no longer be available? For that reason I have moved some of my projects to Tableau, and do not expect to upgrade to Excel 2013.
Can you confirm the availability of Power Pivot for all Excel 2013 users , or will it be restricted and unavailable for some users?
@Buzz
I believe that Power Pivot is included with all MS Office installs in 2013.
Have a read of:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-001/excel-help/version-compatibility-between-powerpivot-data-models-in-excel-2010-and-excel-2013-HA103929426.aspx
http://office.microsoft.com/en-001/excel-help/whats-new-in-powerpivot-in-excel-2013-HA102893837.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_2013#Comparison (Note that Excel isn't listed as having Multiple editions)
This is something that Excel is doing very poorly: letting people know what's available with what. It also doesn't help that they have so many packages and versions.
Excel Professional Plus has Power Pivot and Power View. I went through this last week. Spent 4 days upgrading from 365 Home Premium ($99 for the 1-yr subscription) to an additional $7/month for Professional Plus.
Also, one page on Microsoft's site says that their Sharepoint Online Package 2 has Power View. NO! It's not true. Sharepoint Online Package 2 will INTERACT with a spreadsheet that has PP or PV, Package 1 will not.
Just this weekend I upgraded from Home Premium to Professional Plus and spent time with Power View and PowerPivot.
Up to that point I never saw myself in VLOOKUP Hell, and it may not be going away any time soon. I'm surprised to discover how many of my clients are still on Excel 2003. And then I have Mac users who don't have a lot of this great stuff available to them at all.
These are great features and I'm going to dive into the Data Models. Unfortunately, I suspect, for me, the practical use may be limited to blogposts because I can't teach Power View in my workshops or send a client a spreadsheet that has a Power View in it.
Hi OZ,
I think the Microsoft would only upgrade the excel to a certain level instead of making it so powerful that it might threat their BI product. You know these "powerful" stuff can be easily done with a entry level crystal reports version.
Glad to listen to ur opinion on it.
I spent quite some time and energy on Excel and used it a lot, but now I am focusing energy on BI software like crystal reports.
We both know that based on the technology today. All the time we spend on the Macro and advanced function of Excel can be done easily with other softwares which costs only hundreds of bucks.
@Thondom
I don't think Excel tries to be the solver of all problems
It is a generic tool
Which for about 95% of people will do what they want 95% of the time
There will always be specifics where specific custom software will do better than Excel
It is the commonness of Excel which means that I can send a model to you and it will work , most of the time, that is its strength, of course combined with its flexility in being able to be adapted to suit most needs
Hi Hui,
You are right.
But,
for the business and individual, who spend too much resource on Excel to meet their BI requirements and other processing requests.
Should they open their eyes to other ways to do it, in this age? Especially for many people try too much time to process stuff with thousands lines of macro programming.
It is just as when human being created gun fire, the martial arts would not be that effective.
Ppl need to be prodent when they choose their solution.
Hi guys, I just came across your conversation. I have an example of BI vs. Excel stuff. Here in Russia there is an ERP-system called "1C". It became a defacto standart for accounting, planning and BI / analytics. It is positioned as a flexible and powerful system and it really is.
But its reporting abilities aren't user-friendly (or maybe just not me-friendly).
Many reports require programming and all those SQL things, so that is common for a company to have a couple of programmers who develop and code those reports.
So the common solution is to export data to Excel and then process it to be more suitable for further analysis or reporting.
Well, it's obviously not a rule of thumb that special BI software can outperform Excel in day-to-day routine.
Hi Chandoo, thanks for publishing great Excel information. Pardon the ignorance as I havent used Data Model nor PowerPivot. But having seen your video clip on PowerPivot, how does Data Model differ from PowerPivot - the "process" seems familiar? Have a great day! And Excel to new heights! Regards,
@Tris, one main difference is that Data Model is part of Excel Home Premium. You've got to upgrade to ProPlus to get PowerPivot and Power View.
Also, keep in mind that Data model only lets you combine tables. If you want to create powerful measures (for example show % improvement over last year sales), then PowerPivot is the way to go. For a tour of PowerPivot, visit http://chandoo.org/wp/2013/01/21/introduction-to-power-pivot/
Excellent posting, some pride themselves for having sheets with thousands of formulas or complicated formulas, but in the end the important thing is to work as little as possible.
@Nolberto let's not gloat yet. Some people are forced to have thousands of complicated formulas when they don't have the fancy tools. I'm sad for the 2003 users who have to use SUMPRODUCT when the rest of us have SUMIFS available.
In the end, I think the important thing is clean, trustworthy data--however you arrive at it. People survived more than 300 years with slide rules and paper. No PowerPivot for the Wright Brothers.
hi chandoo,
i added 2 column into sales, 1st column vlookup customer ID to CUST sheet to get the male or female, then 2nd column vlookup Product ID to Product sheet to get the product name, then after that i make pivot table out of sales sheet.
but then the result is really different from yours
the purposes is just try to do the vlookup vs add to data model to see if they get same result
thanks
Hi Koi,
We are using gender vs. category in the report. Can you try with that? I am sure the results will match.
ups sorry, didnt see that you're filtering using slicer..then it is good now the result are same with less effort 🙂
thanks
Hi Chandoo, .I am interested to know whether we can build a star schema or snow flake data models through relations in Excel? (trying to correlate with Qlikview)
Hi there,
You can create a Star schema for sure. Snow-flake is possible too. As long as all relationships are one to many (or one to one) anything is possible.
What if customer.profession change its value after sometime?
Supposed we have monthly data for Sales. What if one customer is a doctor in Feb, then a pilot in October, for example?
How to build data model for such that situation?
Thank you.
[...] Introduction to Excel 2013 Data Model & Relationships [...]
Hello ,
I find this option similar to that of MS Access.
In MS Access as well we have relationship concept and once you create a relationship, you can start creating number of queries based on that.
But MS Access is not so user friendly and basically its database. Good that we are getting those options/functions in Excel.
Thanks for sharing this info.
Regards,
Raghavendra Shanbog
What is star schema and snow flake.??? Can we have next article on that if it is useful for us???
Hi there, can anyone help? I tried testing this out in Excel using two tables. When I go to the Data tab the Relationships button does not appear at all. I am using Microsoft version 14.0.4760.1000, Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010. Does this version have this capability? Or is there an add-in required?
[…] even a layperson can perform if they have the almighty Excel 2010 and PowerPivot installed. Or Excel 2013′s Data Model, which lets you mash up data from Excel Tables and serve them up directly as PivotTables with not a […]
Chandoo/Hui,
The dates grouping feature does not seem to work in Data Model. Is that true or am I making a mistake somewhere?
I don't think this is really for "lookups"...
Try creating a pivot with sale ID and customer name in row fields. It will give you ALL customer names per sale ID.
You'd need to use RELATED function in a new column in powerpivot if you want something equivalent to "vlookup"
Please explain the difference between data model and power pivot, the functions of both of them are different and similar
thanks
[…] Handling large volumes of data in Excel—Since Excel 2013, the “Data Model” feature in Excel has provided support for larger volumes of data than the 1M row limit per worksheet. Data Model also embraces the Tables, Columns, Relationships representation as first-class objects, as well as delivering pre-built commonly used business scenarios like year-over-year growth or working with organizational hierarchies. For several customers, the headroom Data Model is sufficient for dealing with their own large data volumes. In addition to the product documentation, several of our MVPs have provided great content on Power Pivot and the Data Model. Here are a couple of articles from Rob Collie and Chandoo. […]
I need to use a slicer to allow a user to select vendor by name. In the background, I need to obtain the vendor ID to link to multiple datasets where the name may not be spelled consistently. Any advice?
@Bernadette
You can use the technique described here:
http://chandoo.org/wp/2016/05/11/apply-conditional-formatting-using-slicers/
I'd suggest try that and then if you have troubles ask the question in the Chandoo.org Forums http://forum.chandoo.org/
Attach a sample file to simplify the response
I've tried this in Excel 2016. It works great.
I can even create Cube Formulas on the Data model after I've inserted the pivot table.
Just for the fun of it, I tried to see if I could do Cube Formulas without creating the pivot table in advance. I can define Cube members, but it seems as if the measure part is playing tricks on me.
I can't get a Cube Value for Chocolates sold to Male customers.
With the Pivot created the formula looks like this (and works fine)
=CUBEVALUE("ThisWorkbookDataModel";"[Customer].[Gender].&[Male]";"[Product].[Category].&[Chocolates]";"[Measures].[Sum of Quantity]")
Does anyone know how I can solve this, or am I asking the impossible?
I want to see the video on this topic
What if customer.profession change its value after sometime?
Supposed we have monthly data for Sales. What if one customer is a doctor in Feb, then a pilot in October, for example?
How to build data model for such that situation?
Thank you.
In such case, you need to make relationships based on two columns. This kind of feature is not supported in Excel. You can use Power Query to merge tables based on multiple columns and return a consolidated giant table to Excel for reporting.
Is it able in MS Access?
I have never used access before.
thanks chandooo your article is very helpfull for troubling peoples' especially in office environment under boss pressure.
Here is an introduction to PowerPivot.
The link above is broken
Hi. This has really taken my interest.. I have huge data tables to work with...and I use vlookup to fetch certain data. I have different data in different sheets...
Like customer sales (customer code, product code,qty, piece rate, total amount, branch code) data in one sheet
Branch details in another (branch code, branch address, state , region)
Customer Geographical Data in third sheet (region, region name)
Product details in fourth sheet (product code, product description and related)
Now I use a vlookup to get branch name, state and product name respectively into my main sheet.
Now what I want is
customer code, product code,qty, piece rate, total amount, branch code) data in one sheet, branch address, state , region, region name, product description
Can't his be done thru data model... I tried but it's not working... Eitherway, I will gonthru thr session on e again and give a try... Any help, is appreciated. Thankyou
Dear All,
i am striving to do reverse relationship in Power pivot ,
example : -
1 - Data sheet
2. - Source data
step to stops - import first data sheet in power piovt and then source data , made relationship with both sheet , after created relationship i am able to do put related formula in source data sheet only (=releted('Source data'[Amount]), if i go to put formula in data sheet , parameter of Source data are not visible ,
could someone educate me how can i do , and utilize related formula in data sheet.