Comments on: Implementing a Dynamic Top X via slicers in Excel 2013 using DAX queries and Excel Macros

By: Opal

Opal — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 06:27:19 +0000

I sent you the spreadsheet back, for anoyne else that’s watching.. use nested IF with AND=IF(AND(A2 ,B2 ),IF(SUM(B2-A2)=0, 0 ,SUM(B2-A2)), “)check a2 and b2 for valuesif they both have values check if value is zero and put 0 if it is or otherwise show the differenceif either one is blank don’t display anything

By: Colin Banfield

Colin Banfield — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 23:28:04 +0000

Hi Kasper,

I see your points. The big problem with a macro solution is that it limits your model to the Excel client. You can’t publish the model to SharePoint and you can’t export it to SSAS Tabular. For this reason, I avoid macros when I can find an alternative solution.

I’m relieved to see that DAX queries can be used with tables. I was very concerned that there were no client tools available to create and view the results of a DAX query.

By: Kasper

Kasper — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 22:47:22 +0000

Hi Colin,

Yes I will clarify a bit, there is no way to get that done easily, I feel this approach is more easily reproducible without having too much DAX to write.

Again you are right, the slicer can now be connected to a table, but they will only show the values from that table. I cannot connect to a model table and have all the years available in the slicer. So it wouldn’t help me in this scenario.

Thanks,
Kasper

By: Colin Banfield

Colin Banfield — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 14:24:04 +0000

Hi Kasper,

Surperb post! A couple of things aren’t clear though:

You said:
“Next up is creating a table that will give us the top 10 Products by Sum of SalesAmount. There is no way to get this using a PivotTable.”

I’m not sure I understand the statement, since all of the past TopN posts are based on PivotTables, and the models I created in Excel 2010 still work in Excel 2013. I think that I might be missing the context of the statement though.

You said:
“There is no way to create slicers that are connected to table, so we need to find a way to work around this.”

Indeed, you can connect a slicer to a table in Excel 2013. It’s one of the top new features touted by the Office team, and I can assure you that it works quite well.