A slicer that doesn’t slice [Pivot Table Tricks]
Mary Ellen, one of our readers, has an interesting conundrum,
I have some data that goes to Pivot table then to pivot chart. There is a slicer to filter the data. But when I slice, my pivot chart gets messed up. How to have the slicer, but still see the insights in the chart?!?
See above demo to understand:
This is because when you slice by a school, the pivot table gets filtered and hence % row total for that school becomes 100% (as there are no other schools).
How to fix the problem? The easy answer is to remove the slicers. But we want to have our slicers and eat a slice of them too. So we crank up the Excel awesomeness valve and get to work. There are two ways to achieve what we want.
- Old school method: Two pivot tables, some formulas & a line chart
- New Excel method: Power Pivot and a line chart
Read the rest of this article to know more.
These icons are so pretty, can I get them in green? [conditional formatting trick]
One of our readers emailed this question recently,
I like the conditional formatting icons. I am trying to present some business data where going down is good. How do I get a green colored down arrow icon?
Essentially, Ms. CanIGetItInGreen wants this:
Unfortunately, Excel’s conditional formatting icons are not customizable. So we can’t get the green down arrows without some sneak. And sneak we shall.
Unpivot and then pivot for clarity (case study)
Or more appropriately titled, the one where Power Query solves the problem in less time than it takes you to say Get & Transform Data.
Recently, one of my students Mr. K, sent me a pivot table problem.
Today my boss asked me “how much we paid to staff since the inception of our business with their respective date of joining?” He wanted to know, level wise summary of the last 16 years (on Quarterly / Year wise basis).
The records appended from the database month wise. Have a look to the file and give your ideas.
Mr. K’s data looked like above.
Using pivot tables to find out non performing customers
Moosa, one of our readers emailed this interesting question:
I have huge list of customers (around 1500).
Table includes following information
Customer # , Customer Name, Sales 2002, sales 2003, … sales 2012My requirements are
1. list of customer who did not have sales during all these years
2. List of customer who have not business from 2003
3. List of customer who have not business from 2004
Today, lets learn how to identify all the non-performing customers.
Highlight Employees by Performance Rating – Conditional Formatting Challenge
So who is up for an Excel challenge?
Shelly, who is an HR Manager sent this distress call last week,
“I have a group of employees- lets say 100 employees. Each employee has a performance rating attached to them. I want to divide the group by 5%, 15%, 65%, 10%, 5% based on their performance rating.”
And that is our challenge today. Read on & help Shelly.
How to Filter Odd or Even Rows only? [Quick Tips]
Ashish sends out this SOS thru email, “I need your help in putting filters . Can we filter the cells on the basis of their even or odd character. i.e in the table of 1-1000, i wish to filter, 1,3,5,7,…”
An odd request, I must say. But nevertheless, possible in Excel.
Read this quick tip, If you want know how to filter odd or even rows only in a list of values.
Merge Cells without Losing Data [Quick Tip]
Many of us face this problem. We have some data in a few cells. Either for alignment or structure, we would like to merge the cell contents in to one big cell. But Excel wont help as it cannot merge values from all cells.