The other day I had to make an excel sheet for tracking all errors across one of the applications we are doing for our customer. The format was something like this,
We wanted to use a consistent message id format [4 digits: 0001, 0002, … , 1000 etc.]. Now I do not want to type “0001” in excel, instead I wanted to type 1 and I want excel to convert that to 0001 for me. So I started looking for a custom cell format and dug a little deeper to understand those. I thought it would be nice to share them to you all.
First take a look at how the cell formatting dialog box – number tab looks like:
Now apart from the built in types General (leave excel to guess the data format), number, currency, accounting (uses the separators, () notation etc.), date, time, percentage, fraction, scientific, text there are 2 interesting types of formating.
Special: Used for phone number, zipcode, social security number formats depending on the locale you select. For eg. for US they would be phone number [xxx-xxx-xxxx], ssn [xxx-xx-xxxx], zipcode[xxxxx, xxxxx-xxxx].
Custom: Used for creating your own cell formatting structure. This is a bit like regular expressions but in entire microsoftish way. Any cell custom format code will be divided in to 4 parts : positive numbers ; negative numbers ; zeros ; text. If your formatting codes have less number of parts (say 1 or 2 or 3) excel will use some common sense to find out which ones are for what.
Ok, without further confusion, this is probably how you can use the custom cell formatting feature in Microsoft excel.
Some explanation that you can skip if you already get it
- For formatting a number [eg. 1] to fixed number of digits [eg. 0001] you have to use 0000 as the custom formatting code
- For formatting a phone number [eg. 18003333333] to a standard phone number format [eg. 1 800-333-3333] you have to use 0 000-000-0000 as the custom formatting code
- To fill rest of the cell with a character of your choice [eg. *] you have to use @**(this applies for text inputs)
What are your favorite data formatting tricks? [Also read : Creating cool dashboards in excel using conditional cell formatting]
One Response to “SQL vs. Power Query – The Ultimate Comparison”
Enjoyed your SQL / Power Query podcast (A LOT). I've used SQL a little longer than Chandoo. Power Query not so much.
Today I still use SQL & VBA for my "go to" applications. While I don't pull billions of rows, I do pull millions. I agree with Chandoo about Power Query (PQ) lack of performance. I've tried to benchmark PQ to SQL and I find that a well written SQL will work much faster. Like mentioned in the podcast, my similar conclusion is that SQL is doing the filtering on the server while PQ is pulling data into the local computer and then filtering the data. I've heard about PQ query folding but I still prefer SQL.
My typical excel application will use SQL to pull data from an Enterprise DB. I load data into Structured Tables and/or Excel Power Pivot (especially if there's lot of data).
I like to have a Control Worksheet to enter parameters, display error messages and have user buttons to execute VBA. I use VBA to build/edit parameters used in the SQL. Sometimes I use parameter-based SQL. Sometimes I create a custom SQL String in a hidden worksheet that I then pull into VBA code (these may build a string of comma separated values that's used with a SQL include). Another SQL trick I like to do is tag my data with a YY-MM, YY-QTR, or YY-Week field constructed form a Transaction Date.
In an application, I like to create a dashboard(s) that may contain hyperlinks that allow the end-user to drill into data. Sometimes the hyperlink will point to worksheet and sometimes to a supporting workbook. In some cases, I use a double click VBA Macro that will pull additional data and direct the user to a supplemental worksheet or pivot table.
In recent years I like Dynamic Formulas & Lambda Functions. I find this preferable to pivot tales and slicers. I like to use a Lambda in conjunction with a cube formula to pull data from a power pivot data model. I.E. a Lambda using a cube formula to aggregate Accounting Data by a general ledger account and financial period. Rather than present info in a power pivot table, you can use this combination to easily build financial reports in a format that's familiar to Accounting Professionals.
One thing that PQ does very well is consolidating data from separate files. In the old days this was always a pain.
I've found that using SQL can be very trying (even for someone with experience). It's largely an iterative process. Start simple then use Xlookup (old days Match/Index). Once you get the relationships correct you can then use SQL joins to construct a well behaved SQL statement.
Most professional enterprise systems offer a schema that's very valuable for constructing SQL statements. For any given enterprise system there's often a community of users that will share SQL. I.E. MS Great Plains was a great source (but I haven't used them in years).
Hope this long reply has value - keep up the good work.