Do you want to know the secret to building complex, advanced Excel formulas? Here it is… 👇
Get inspiration from LEGO.
Confused? Let me demonstrate.
Calculating Student with Highest GPA
Let’s build a formula to calculate the student with best GPA out of a table like this:
Our data is in columns C& D, in the range C6:D45.
- We can easily lookup the name of a student with GPA of say, 3.53, using lookup formulas like XLOOKUP.
- We can also calculate the maximum (best) GPA using the MAX formula.
When you combine the Ideas 1 & 2, just like you combine LEGO, you create a third formula that gets the name of student with highest GPA.
So the final formula would be:
=XLOOKUP(MAX(D6:D45),D6:D45,C6:C45)
And now, you can do the happy dance.
How about second highest GPA Student?
We can extend this idea to get the name of student with second highest GPA. Instead of MAX, we need to use LARGE function. Like this:
=XLOOKUP(LARGE(D6:D45, 2),D6:D45,C6:C45)
In the above formula, LARGE(…, 2) returns the second highest GPA.
You can use the same concept to get third highest or second lowest (use SMALL(…,2)).
The LEGO way of building complex formulas...
Just as there are a few basic building blocks in LEGO (well, nowadays, you can find a weird block shaped like dragon’s eyeball to fit in your harry potter set, but you get my point), we can also construct a complex formula from few basic ingredients.
Keep this construction tips in mind…
- Break down the complex problem to small manageable chunks
- Write down formulas for these chunks
- If you need to repeat some logic, consider using either helper cells, or the new LET() function
- Utilize the power of Excel references (absolute - $A$1, relative A1, mixed - A$1, $A1 and finally structural (table[column]) to write shorter & simpler formulas
- Try newer formulas like FILTER, UNIQUE, SORT, LAMBDA etc. to get results easily
- Take time to learn new techniques - such as spill ranges, LAMBDAs, data type driven formulas
- When you have time, challenge yourself to figure out another formula to solve the problem
5 Examples of how to build complex formulas
If you are curious about this, then definitely watch my video. It shows how to write advanced formulas with Excel. See it below or on my YouTube channel.
Sample Workbook - 5 Complex Formulas
If you would like to practice these formulas, here is the sample workbook.
Share your answers in the comments section.
Want more inspiration? Check out below examples:
There are heaps of advanced formula examples on chandoo.org. Start with below and see how you can twist the same 2×2 block in umpteen ways.
- Formula Forensics – a series of amazing Excel formula trickery
- Multi-condition Lookups – using good old VLOOKUP in creative ways
- 10 Advanced IF formula tricks – the trusty IF can do wonders
- Dynamic Array Formulas – HOT HOT HOT – You must try these.
61 Responses to “What is Power Pivot – an Introduction ”
I use power pivot as ideal connection between our databases and my reports.
One of the most powerfull add-ins I have seen so far.
YouTube is blocked in Pakistan, Pakistani viewers are unable to watch videos of Youtube. Can you please share some other link ? Or Download link please.
@Rahim... Please see the video here: http://files.chandoo.org/power-pivot/Introduction%20to%20Power%20Pivot/Introduction%20to%20Power%20Pivot.html
Thanks
more thanks from pk : )
Thanks
THANKS A LOT FOR LINK. PLEASE DO THAT IN FUTURE ALSO FOR BENEFIT OF US
Hi Sir, can you please provide the sample excel workbooks for practice.
Very nice tutorial Chandoo. In my company, I am able to bring in important data from the "customer" table and the "product" table using our IBM showcase query tool. The real power will be combining non-traditional data from outside our data warehouse.
Ex: How do weather patterns effect sales?
Another key area where Power Pivots can shine is Digital Marketing. With so many touch points (Cell/Website/In Store/Email) there will be a huge need to link this data. How about a dual post with Avinash? 🙂
Sadly our company is stuck at Excel 2007 - and no plans to upgrade.
Are there any features of PowerPivot that can be used in 2007, or with an optional add-in?
@Gijs
You may want to have a read of: http://www.powerpivotpro.com/2010/12/powerpivot-for-excel-2007/
as well as the comments at the bottom of the post
Thanks for this. It was certainly mind-blowing AND you use an example that I get all the time.
I've heard about PowerPivot since 2010 and made various efforts to find a use for it. Recently someone told me that it's great but it's not worth the trouble if you don't have a massive amount of data.
What you showed isn't massive, it's more like a jigsaw puzzle. All the pieces are there, and it can be assembled with VLOOKUPs and helper columns but PowerPivot is much more elegant.
I see!
This looks awesome, but one question - is there power using this if you can pull all the data into one sheet? That is, what if my database HAS all the information I need, and I can just dump it into one tab?
Thanks!
@Vaslo
If your data is of the size that it can fit in one worksheet and can be processed quickly enough then PowerPivot may not be for you
Where PowerPivot starts to excel is in processing more than 1,048,576 rows of data or doing complex queries which take a while to process normally in Excel.
I dunno hui - I'm still kind of new to powerpivot, but even for small data sets those dax formulas are the truth.
@Dan_l
I did say "or doing complex queries" ?
You're right. You did. srry.
Although you may be tempted to ditch PowerPivot in such cases, I still advice trying it for below reasons:
Hi Chandoo, I have only this week been asked to upgrade my work pc from Windows XP to Windows 7 as well as install SSAS 2012, Office 2013 so that we can start to leverage the capabilities of Excel 2013, Powerpivot, PowerView, Sharepoint.
We have an Enterprise Data Warehouse including many disconnected data marts, sources etc. We will be using these tools for express reporting solutions that with investment can turn into full enterprise reporting solutions. The money saved in liscencing other products i.e Cognos to do similar at twice the development time does not stack up with what can be achieved with Excel PowerPivot.
Hi Chandoo. Love your newsletters, please keep them coming. Yours is one of the services that rank as 'Most Important' along with open source. Thank You.
My question is if I add PowerPivot to my Excel 2010 at work. Can I still create macros to add to reports to send to people that don't have PowerPivot?
My job is to manage data generated at a remote site and create reports that run automatically to present a filtered dashboard.
Peter
The correct way to share powerpivot reports / dashboards with end users is to publish them on a sharepoint server or similar. This lets your users interact with your data model thru slicers, timelines etc. and get the insights they want right from browser.
I am not aware of a power pivot viewer (ala tableau viewer) that lets your end users use powerpivot workbooks with out the add-in (or Excel 2013).
Another option is to use VBA in your computer to turn Power Pivot reports to static ranges or convert all power pivot tables to formulas (using Analyze ribbon > OLAP tools > Convert to formulas)
Hi Chandoo...We usually use an array formula on a large amount of data - since excel hangs we split the data into several files and then run the formula - do you think power pivot can help in this case in any way? All the data is exactly the same and can be easily combined in one file - only deterrant is the fact that excel cannot process it that way
Wow! I love PowerPivot. Thank you
Please add me to the PowerPivot notification list.
Are the 3 tables of data from the YouTube video available?
I was scared or indimidated at least, to learn PowerPivot. Thanks for helping me see the light 🙂
I have started to use PowerPivot very recently, as I currently query our SQL server and store this data in separate 'excel databases' (just tables really) which are used for client reporting & dashboard reporting. However recently, due to the physical size of these files, I have had to look for an alternative (without using Access) - this is where PowerPivot came to the rescue. Love the fact that it recognises relationships between tables - currently I have had to force this with INDEX(MATCH(COLUMN)) or similar within the tables themselves (which doesn't help my file size issue!)
Quite early days but it certainly looks like a vast improvement, and of course will be much quicker as excel will not be working as hard.
Looking forward to learning more about PowerPivot......
Wonderful tool and thanks for publishing it... awaiting for the course
You showed how to link a power pivot file to an excel file. The more data added to the excel file would then be added to the power pivot file because they are linked. What if you imported the excel data into power pivot without linking the files. Is the only way to add more data to the power pivot file, is to import a new sheet tab of data to the power pivot file and create a relationship?
I ask because a linked file I have is 14mb and non linked file is 1.4mb.
Both power pivot files have the same data. I can see the ease of the linked files but the benefit of a smaller file.
[...] week, you saw an Introduction to Power Pivot for Excel. Today, lets talk about DAX formulas & measures for Power [...]
Any chance of being able to download the original data worksheet?
Hi Chandoo,
how we will import data in power pivot 2010
[...] Introduction to Power Pivot [...]
[...] Related: What is PowerPivot & How to use it? [...]
[...] Introduction to PowerPivot [...]
Wow! Our company was considering buying an expensive data analysis suite like Tableau (which would have cost thousands of dollars), but this does everything Tableau does, and it works right inside of Excel.
Thank you! You saved us a lot of headaches and money!
Nice tutorial chandoo,it help me a lot
by the way,can you give me excel file in these tutorial,so I can practice with it,please send to mahdi.haris@outlook.com
Thanks very much
Im in Dubai we use dd/mm/yy format however poverpivot reads some dates as months and mnths as dates. Pls help me to solve this prblm
Thanks.
Iqbal
i am new in Power pivot , but i have many excel book with more than a 1,000,000 records
thanks...
[…] so much more, that that’s a subject for another post. Fortunately Chandoo already wrote it: What is Power Pivot – an Introduction. (Chandoo, that title is way too descriptive. You’ll never make Class 1 Geek unless you learn […]
Sorry for commenting on wrong post , I can't enable powerpivot to excel 2010. Please help me
Thanks in Advance.
Shree
[…] late 2012, I started learning PowerPivot. Although, PowerPivot has been around for a few years, I never used it well until then. I bought a […]
Hi Chandoo, what a terrific feature it is!
I was hoping to update my Excel version here at work and build some awesome dashboards using PowerPivot, but I believe that not just the authors but also the readers of a PowerPivot-based file must have 2010 or above version of Excel, right?
Since I create stuff for multiple persons across the globe, that would be a expansive solution (#sad) that here, in this International Budget Maker (hope you get it), will never be accepted.
Thanks for the tip, I'll definitely try it at home ;D
Is there any way
@Kdu B
PowerPivot is supported just on the latest version of Excel 2010/13.
You must use Excel 2010/13 to get full access to all PowerPivot features.
For more information, please refer to the articles below:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-au/excel/download-powerpivot-HA101959985.aspx
Can you please share the file you use in the demo so that we can try it by ourselves? thank you!
did you get the file ?
[…] Introduction to Power Pivot & how to use it? […]
Hi Chandoo,
I need in depth knowledge about Power Pivot. Can you help pls?
Regards,
Manju
I found your video clip regarding Power Pivot very impressive but I'm confusing how to get this Add-In as I've Excel 2010 in the office and Excel 2013 in the home I've tried but failed kindly guide me.
Please upload the file that you used in the demo so we can practice thanks 🙂
Great insights on PowerPivot!! 🙂
Thanks Chandoo
Hello Chandoo
New to your website and power pivot.
One quick question regarding connecting sheets in power pivot. It turns out, at least in 2010 version, that you connect sheets only with one field.
Example I have two files that have badge #s and date fields. I couldn't set up a relationship using both fields. And because the same badge # appears on different dates I couldn't set up any relationship at all, as badge # by itself wasn't a unique field.
I cheated by concatenating badge and day(date) in a new column. Then it worked 🙂
Is excel 2013 the same?
Just wondering...cheers 🙂
Welcome to our website & thanks for your comments Artieboy.
Even in 2013, you can only set relationships on single column. So you should continue with the concatenate approach.
[…] http://chandoo.org/wp/2013/01/21/introduction-to-power-pivot/ […]
It's worth noting here for the people who are having trouble finding the add-in, that the Power Pivot Add-in is only available in specific versions of Excel/Office.
It is not available in Office Home or Home and Business - if purchasing now you'd need to go for at least Office Professional or Office 365 Small Business Premium.
I believe the standalone version of Excel has it, too.
Sadly I did not find this out until after getting excited by this article! Oh well!
I was using PowerPivot with Excel 2010 extensively until 2015 when we upgraded to Office 2013.
At that point, I was unable to open my source file due to "missing providers". I posted the problem on the Microsoft site and so far no one has provided an meaningful approach to recovering my files.
Hi
Where can we download the demo excel?
Thx
Please send me the sample data workbook used in this video. Thanks.
We have MS Office Standard 2010 [Excel, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher and Word]. I have two questions. Can we install the add-on from the following page and is it free:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=43348
@Abdul
Yes to both Questions
Dear Sir,
We are using the Office 365 we need to enable the power pivote in msoffice 2016
Please guide us
Regards,
Kailash
Its a wonderful explanation of the powerpivot. Could you share the sample excel file with us so that we can practice the same as you have taught.
Regards,
Sumanta