Nothing gives a teacher more satisfaction than seeing a student apply the knowledge to do something awesome. So naturally, I jumped with joy when I got this email from Dan, one of my VBA Class students,
Hi Chandoo,
After going thru your VBA Classes, I realized that we can lots of awesome stuff with pivot tables + simple macros. I recently created an Excel Dashboard to depict MLB (Major League Baseball) Pitching Stats. I could not have done this had I not learned VBA. Thank you so much for teaching the class.
I got curious and requested Dan, if I could share the file with you all. Being a lovely person, Dan agreed immediately.
MLB Pitching Stats Dashboard – using Excel + VBA
[Click here for larger version]
How does this dashboard work?
Dan used a lot of techniques to weave together this dashboard. Since it would take me until Christmas if I explain everything, I made a short video explaining how this dashboard works. See it below:
You can see it on our youtube channel too.
What techniques are used in this dashboard?
Dan is a regular reader of Chandoo.org, so he used many of the charting & formula techniques we teach here (as well as in my Excel School & VBA classes). Click thru below links to learn them.
- Dynamic Named Ranges using OFFSET formula
- Dynamic Charts
- Using Form Controls
- Sorting a list using Pivot Tables
- Updating Pivot Table Report Filters using VBA
- Excel Dashboards – Examples, Resources & Ideas
- Highlighting points in line charts & scatter plots
Download MLB Pitching Stats Excel Dashboard
Click here to download the Excel workbook and play with the dashboard.
Ready to Create your Own Dashboards & VBA Code?
If you want to create similar stuff and wow everyone at work, then joining my upcoming batch of VBA classes is a good idea. We are re-opening enrollments for this course on September 5th.
Click here for course details.
If you are interested in our VBA class, join our newsletter.
Thank you Dan
Thank you so much Dan for making my day. I really liked the way you have put together many concepts to create a stunning dashboard.
If you liked this dashboard, say thanks to Dan.
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...