In the 5th session of Chandoo.org podcast, we are going to demystify form controls.
I am very happy and excited to interview my good friend, fellow Excel MVP, author, blogger and virtual mentor – Debra Dalgleish about this topic.
Before we proceed in to the session, let me remind you:
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What is in this session?
In this session we are going to explore form controls, a powerful feature of Excel that makes your workbooks interactive. Debra is a world famous expert on all topics of Excel (especially data validation, pivot tables & form controls) and this session is very entertaining, informative and practical.
In this podcast Debra mentions about her User forms training kit. I highly recommend this product for anyone hoping to learn user forms, data entry forms and form controls. As our podcast listener, if you choose to purchase this training kit, you get
- 20% discount on Debra’s User Form Training kit (if you buy before April 30th, 2014)
- Special bonus from me: 14 page guide & practice workbook on form controls
Listen to the podcast to know how to get these.
In this podcast, you will learn,
- What are form controls
- When you would use them?
- Example form control – Combo box
- How form controls differ from active-x controls
- How to enable form controls in your Excel?
- Various important form controls
- Combo box
- Command Button
- Radio Button
- Check box
- Scroll bar & Spin button
- List box
- Compatibility of form controls between various version of Excel
- Comparison of form controls with other types of interactive features in Excel
- Slicers
- Hyper links
- VBA
- Debra’s favorite form control tip
- Special bonus & how to obtain it
Go ahead and listen to the show
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS
Links & Resources mentioned in this session:
Debra’s website – Contextures.com
Books mentioned:
Courses mentioned:
- Excel School online training program
- VBA Classes online training program
- Debra’s User forms training kit
Articles & Discussion on Form controls
- Enabling Developer Toolbar & Form controls in Excel
- Multiple Selection thru Data validation
- Dependent Data Validation (Cascading Data Validation)
- Dependent Data Validation [contextures.com]
- Multi-selection list boxes – how to use them?
Other types of interactive features in Excel
- Introduction to hyperlinks
- Slicers – how to use them – case study
- Making your dashboards & reports interactive – detailed guide
Recommended Resource – Debra’s User Form Training Kit
If you wish to learn more about user forms, form controls and how they can simplify life for your workbook users, then please consider purchasing Debra’s User Form training kit. It is an eBook + Excel workbook combo that works very well and helps you understand these advanced concepts very easily.
Note: You get 20% discount on this if you buy before 30th of April. Listen to podcast for details.
Note about links: The links to various books & Debra’s training kit are affiliate links. It means when you click on them & purchase, Chandoo.org receives some commission. I recommend these books because I genuinely love them. I would have recommended even if there is no benefit to me.
Transcript of this session:
Download this podcast transcript [PDF]
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Do you use form controls?
I use them in almost all my dashboards. They are really easy to set up and use. I also love slicers, hyperlinks, little bit of VBA and any other type of interactive features Excel supports.
What about you? Do you use form controls? What is your experience like? Please share using comments.
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?