In the 27th session of Chandoo.org podcast, let’s pave way for an awesome 2015.
We are going to talk about 15 proven strategies for making you awesome in Excel & Your work.
What is in this session?
We all get fresh dose of energy, enthusiasm & drive during new years. So we aim for bigger & more awesome things. But once the first few weeks are over, we just settle down to the normal rhythm and forget about these big, hairy & audacious goals.
Let’s make 2015 different. In this podcast, Let’s understand how you can become awesome in Excel & your work this year, with 15 proven strategies:
- Announcements – my new year & plans for next few months
- Becoming awesome – 3 important areas of focus
- Learning
- New formulas
- New features
- Different charts
- Macros
- Linkup Excel with other software
- Get a book
- Join a course
- Application
- Take up a work project
- Consulting
- Mimic a chart in Excel
- Beyond XL – Power Pivot etc.
- Sharing
- Forums
- Helping a colleague
- Comment on blogs
- Train your team
Listen to this session
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Click here to download the MP3 file.
Links & Resources mentioned in this podcast
Upcoming live events:
- PASS Business Analytics Conference 2015
- Advanced Excel & Power Pivot Masterclass in Australia – 2015
Learning Excel:
- Advanced & Array formulas
- Solver
- What is a Macro?
- Excel VBA – Information, tutorials & examples
- Recommended Excel books
- Online classes from Chandoo.org
Applying Excel skills:
Sharing Excel Skills:
Transcript of this session:
Download this podcast transcript [PDF].
How are you planning to be awesome in 2015?
I am going to learn something new, apply & share more in 2015. I will also be meeting people thru live events (like conferences or masterclasses) and learning from them.
What about you? How are you planning to be awesome in 2015? Share your thoughts in the comments section.
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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...