SQL (Structured Query Language) is one of the most important skills for us, data people. So in this article + video, get the necessary SQL skills you need for Data Analysis work.
Step 0: Install MySQL software
I am using the FREE MySQL Community Edition software to learn & practice SQL at home. You can get it from here.
If you have any other database software available (such as SQL Server or Oracle), you can use them to follow this tutorial.
Step 1: Import Awesome Chocolates Dataset
You need some data to practice SQL. So I prepared a sample dataset for a fictional (but yummy) company called Awesome Chocolates.
Download the .SQL file from here.
After you have the file,
- Open MySQL Workbench, login if necessary
- Click on the “server administration” tab (see illustration, click to expand)
- Click on “Data Import/Restore”
- Select the option “Import from self-contained file”
- Specify the path of the downloaded awesome-chocolates-data.sql file
- Start import
At the end of these steps, your MySQL should have the awesome chocolates database. Congratulations 🎉🥳
You can see this from “Schemas” tab on the workbench
Using SQL Server?
You can also use SQL Server to practice SQL. If you are using SQL Server Management Console, then follow below steps to import the data.
- Download this SQL Server Backup file
- Unzip the file
- Open SSMS & right click on the databases and chose “Restore Database” option. Follow the steps on that screen using below screenshots.
Step 2: Learn SQL for Data Analysis with this video
Everything is ready. Time to learn SQL.
I made an hour long tutorial to explain all the necessary SQL concepts for you. In this video, you will learn:
- How to use SELECT statement to answer business questions
- Working with WHERE clause
- Using AND, OR, NOT and combining them to create complex queries.
- Sorting query results using ORDER BY
- Combining data from two or more tables using JOINS
- Creating reports with GROUP BY
- More than 50 example queries, tips and ideas
Please watch the video below or on my YouTube Channel.
The Queries
Here are some of the example queries covered in the video lesson. Feel free to copy paste them in to SQL console to see how they work.
-- Select everything from sales table
select * from sales;
-- Show just a few columns from sales table
select SaleDate, Amount, Customers from sales;
select Amount, Customers, GeoID from sales;
-- Adding a calculated column with SQL
Select SaleDate, Amount, Boxes, Amount / boxes from sales;
-- Naming a field with AS in SQL
Select SaleDate, Amount, Boxes, Amount / boxes as 'Amount per box' from sales;
-- Using WHERE Clause in SQL
select * from sales
where amount > 10000;
-- Showing sales data where amount is greater than 10,000 by descending order
select * from sales
where amount > 10000
order by amount desc;
-- Showing sales data where geography is g1 by product ID &
-- descending order of amounts
select * from sales
where geoid='g1'
order by PID, Amount desc;
-- Working with dates in SQL
Select * from sales
where amount > 10000 and SaleDate >= '2022-01-01';
-- Using year() function to select all data in a specific year
select SaleDate, Amount from sales
where amount > 10000 and year(SaleDate) = 2022
order by amount desc;
-- BETWEEN condition in SQL with < & > operators
select * from sales
where boxes >0 and boxes <=50;
-- Using the between operator in SQL
select * from sales
where boxes between 0 and 50;
-- Using weekday() function in SQL
select SaleDate, Amount, Boxes, weekday(SaleDate) as 'Day of week'
from sales
where weekday(SaleDate) = 4;
-- Working with People table
select * from people;
-- OR operator in SQL
select * from people
where team = 'Delish' or team = 'Jucies';
-- IN operator in SQL
select * from people
where team in ('Delish','Jucies');
-- LIKE operator in SQL
select * from people
where salesperson like 'B%';
select * from people
where salesperson like '%B%';
select * from sales;
-- Using CASE to create branching logic in SQL
select SaleDate, Amount,
case when amount < 1000 then 'Under 1k'
when amount < 5000 then 'Under 5k'
when amount < 10000 then 'Under 10k'
else '10k or more'
end as 'Amount category'
from sales;
-- GROUP BY in SQL
select team, count(*) from people
group by team
SQL Practice Problems
Once you understand the concepts I’ve demoed in the video, try to solve below homework problems.
If you want to cheat, use the solutions tab to see the answers.
INTERMEDIATE PROBLEMS
👉 You need to combine various concepts covered in the video to solve these
1. Print details of shipments (sales) where amounts are > 2,000 and boxes are <100?
2. How many shipments (sales) each of the sales persons had in the month of January 2022?
3. Which product sells more boxes? Milk Bars or Eclairs?
4. Which product sold more boxes in the first 7 days of February 2022? Milk Bars or Eclairs?
5. Which shipments had under 100 customers & under 100 boxes? Did any of them occur on Wednesday?
HARD PROBLEMS
👉 These require concepts not covered in the video
1. What are the names of salespersons who had at least one shipment (sale) in the first 7 days of January 2022?
2. Which salespersons did not make any shipments in the first 7 days of January 2022?
3. How many times we shipped more than 1,000 boxes in each month?
4. Did we ship at least one box of ‘After Nines’ to ‘New Zealand’ on all the months?
5. India or Australia? Who buys more chocolate boxes on a monthly basis?
INTERMEDIATE PROBLEMS:
— 1. Print details of shipments (sales) where amounts are > 2,000 and boxes are <100?
select * from sales where amount > 2000 and boxes < 100;
— 2. How many shipments (sales) each of the sales persons had in the month of January 2022?
select p.Salesperson, count(*) as ‘Shipment Count’
from sales s
join people p on s.spid = p.spid
where SaleDate between ‘2022-1-1’ and ‘2022-1-31’
group by p.Salesperson;
— 3. Which product sells more boxes? Milk Bars or Eclairs?
select pr.product, sum(boxes) as ‘Total Boxes’
from sales s
join products pr on s.pid = pr.pid
where pr.Product in (‘Milk Bars’, ‘Eclairs’)
group by pr.product;
— 4. Which product sold more boxes in the first 7 days of February 2022? Milk Bars or Eclairs?
select pr.product, sum(boxes) as ‘Total Boxes’
from sales s
join products pr on s.pid = pr.pid
where pr.Product in (‘Milk Bars’, ‘Eclairs’)
and s.saledate between ‘2022-2-1’ and ‘2022-2-7’
group by pr.product;
— 5. Which shipments had under 100 customers & under 100 boxes? Did any of them occur on Wednesday?
select * from sales
where customers < 100 and boxes < 100;
select *,
case when weekday(saledate)=2 then ‘Wednesday Shipment’
else ”
end as ‘W Shipment’
from sales
where customers < 100 and boxes < 100;
HARD PROBLEMS:
— What are the names of salespersons who had at least one shipment (sale) in the first 7 days of January 2022?
select distinct p.Salesperson
from sales s
join people p on p.spid = s.SPID
where s.SaleDate between ‘2022-01-01’ and ‘2022-01-07’;
— Which salespersons did not make any shipments in the first 7 days of January 2022?
select p.salesperson
from people p
where p.spid not in
(select distinct s.spid from sales s where s.SaleDate between ‘2022-01-01’ and ‘2022-01-07’);
— How many times we shipped more than 1,000 boxes in each month?
select year(saledate) ‘Year’, month(saledate) ‘Month’, count(*) ‘Times we shipped 1k boxes’
from sales
where boxes>1000
group by year(saledate), month(saledate)
order by year(saledate), month(saledate);
— Did we ship at least one box of ‘After Nines’ to ‘New Zealand’ on all the months?
set @product_name = ‘After Nines’;
set @country_name = ‘New Zealand’;
select year(saledate) ‘Year’, month(saledate) ‘Month’,
if(sum(boxes)>1, ‘Yes’,’No’) ‘Status’
from sales s
join products pr on pr.PID = s.PID
join geo g on g.GeoID=s.GeoID
where pr.Product = @product_name and g.Geo = @country_name
group by year(saledate), month(saledate)
order by year(saledate), month(saledate);
— India or Australia? Who buys more chocolate boxes on a monthly basis?
select year(saledate) ‘Year’, month(saledate) ‘Month’,
sum(CASE WHEN g.geo=’India’ = 1 THEN boxes ELSE 0 END) ‘India Boxes’,
sum(CASE WHEN g.geo=’Australia’ = 1 THEN boxes ELSE 0 END) ‘Australia Boxes’
from sales s
join geo g on g.GeoID=s.GeoID
group by year(saledate), month(saledate)
order by year(saledate), month(saledate);
Resources to Learn More
SQL is a great skill to have if you work with data. Please use below courses, books, articles & websites to learn more.
SQL BOOKs 📚
I recommend getting these SQL books.
SQL COURSEs 💻
I recommend trying out these courses on SkillShare academy.
SQL WEBSITEs 🌐
Do check out these helpful websites to learn and understand various SQL concepts.
If you use my links to purchase the books or courses, I get a small affiliate commission.
There is no extra cost to you, obviously.
SQL Alternatives
If you want an alternative to SQL, consider learning Power Query.
Here is an article and here is a video to help you with that.
All the best 👍
I wish you all the best with your SQL learning. Do let me know in the comments below if you have enjoyed this article and the video.
23 Responses to “Displaying Text Values in Pivot Tables without VBA”
Its possible to display up to 4 text values.
Have a look at the screen shot of an example that I had posted way back at the EHA and figure out how its done !
http://tinypic.com/r/muzywk/6
With Excel 2010 you can use Conditional Formatting to apply custom number formats which can display text. (In older versions you can only modify text color and cell background color, but not number formats.) Using CF allows for an even larger number of different display values.
[...] Display text values in Pivot Tables without VBA [...]
Hey,
Thanks, this helps. But how do you do it for multiple values where there is a huge amount of non repeating text?
@Soumya
The only way to do more than 4 values is to make the Pivot Table manually with formulas, of course then it isn't a Pivot table
You can of course do it with VBA
You may want to have a look at this description of how to do it here: http://www.clearlyandsimply.com/clearly_and_simply/2011/06/emulate-excel-pivot-tables-with-texts-in-the-value-area-using-vba.html
@Soumya
The only way to do more than 4 values is to make the Pivot Table manually with formulas, of course then it isn’t a Pivot table
You can of course do it with VBA
You may want to have a look at this description of how to do it here: http://www.clearlyandsimply.com/clearly_and_simply/2011/06/emulate-excel-pivot-tables-with-texts-in-the-value-area-using-vba.html
[...] Pivot Tables take tables of data and allow the user to summarise and consolidate the data at the same time. This is a great and very fast method of analysis but is restricted to handling mathematical functions on the value field resulting in numerical summaries. – read more [...]
[…] Read more here: Displaying Text Values in Pivot Tables without VBA […]
There is a very good way actually for handling text inside values area.
First you create a special column on the very left side and call it ID, and put unique ID (numbers only), and then create a pivot table with:
Row Labels and Column labels as you like, and in the Values labels use the unique ID number.
Move the unique ID number (copy paste) somewhere to the right and use vlookup to load the data you need using the ID as reference.
It is a bit longer way but for me it works perfectly to combine values as you like in any moment.
hope helps.
Regards,
Jon
Thank you! I finally understand pivot tables thanks to your clear, concise explanations and examples.
Good Day. This is exactly what i have been looking for. However when i try it on my pivot table or even when i try to recreate this exercise using the sample worksheet, i get this error:
"Microsoft Excel cannot use the number format you typed. Try using one of the built-in number formats."
Same thing here, Excel quite did not like the format in my PowerPivot. Any clues as to what may be going on? Thanks.
I have the same thing happening on my end. I'm running a normal pivot table on a .xlsm file.
@Danzi
What format did you use?
can you post the file ?
pls. help in table there is name, pan. amount. i have to make pivot table for example
NAME PAN AMOUNT
MR.X AAAAC1254T 500.00
MR.Y AAABR1258C
MR.A CFVDE2458T
MR.Z AAVCR12548C
MR.X AAAAC1254T
MR.Z AADCD245T
pls. help in table there is name, pan. amount. i have to make pivot table for example
NAME PAN AMOUNT
MR.X AAAAC1254T 500.00
MR.Y AAABR1258C 1000
MR.A CFVDE2458T 2000
MR.Z AAVCR12548C 5451
MR.X AAAAC1254T 45564
MR.Z AADCD245T 4500
how to get pivot tabe so i get PAN no. against Name.
I found an easy way to get text values in pivot table.
I create an other worksheet in wich each cell has a formula that copy the pivot table. The trick is that the formula does a lookup for the numbers in the pivot table.
The formula looks like that:
=IF(ISNUMBER(table!A1);VLOOKUP(table!A1;Code!$A$1:$B$65;2);IF(ISBLANK(table!A1);" ";table!A1))
Code is a worksheet where there is a liste of text /numbers correspondance.
As a bonus The new sheet is easier to format
Additional trick:
In my case, i encoded differents codeid with a power(2, codeId-1) so that summing then is equivalent to concatenate them.
1-A
2-B
4-C
8-D
yields :
5 - AC
14 - BCD
Hi
I want to ask if pivot can display dates in pivot field. As in a column i have customers and in row different items i want to know there last purchase date. anyone help in this??
Hello Guys, Need your help
I am doing some analysis of the cycle time of the product i.e how much time a product takes from manufacturing to the central warehouse.
I have batch numbers for the product and against them i have to pull out the diff. dates
Like the base date is from where the manufacturing start. So i have the batch number,against it's manuf. date. Now i have to pull out the date when it was quality released.
I have the quality released data but the data have duplicates, like i will have two dates or may be three for the same batch. So my main objective is to pull out the date which is latest among them.
BATCH NO. DATE of Mfg. DATE of Quality release
A1 12/4/2014 (HERE I HAVE TO PULL value)
Next Sheet
BATCH NO. DATE of Quality Release
A1 14/5/2014
a2 23/5/2016
A1 12/5/2014
A1 13/6/2014
From this sheet i have to pull up the latest date format of date here is dd/mm/yyy
TIA
[…] needed to present text instead of counts in a pivot table value column. Here is an excellent resource for Excel manipulation, in addition to an overview of pivot […]
This is great thank you.
Wow!!! Excellent!! It helped me a lot.
I am developing training tracking sheet for 200 employees with training completed date. Each employee will be attending 25 courses. How to indicate actual dates in pivot table value field.