New Version of Data Explorer Released

March 26, 2013

 
Quick post today, as I am travelling again.  PowerPivot’s version of Tyler Durden Smile

If you installed Data Explorer a couple weeks back, go look at your Data Explorer ribbon tab today:

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This “Update” Button “Lit Up” Last Week – Click It Smile
(I already did, so mine is now disabled again)

That will launch you into a surprisingly painless update.  Pretty nifty.

New Features

They added support for a few new data source types:

  1. Azure HDInsight – the MS cloud version of Hadoop
  2. Teradata
  3. PostgreSQL

They also improved the query editing experience.

Full details here:  http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dataexplorer/archive/2013/03/12/a-new-build-of-data-explorer-and-an-auto-update-feature.aspx

Download it From Scratch

If you haven’t downloaded data explorer yet, you can get it here:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/download-data-explorer-for-excel-FX104018616.aspx

What the Heck is Data Explorer?

Read this quick post from two weeks ago


“Introducing” Data Explorer

March 7, 2013

 
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In My Opinion, There Aren’t Many Things More Exciting Than a New Ribbon Tab Full of Goodies
(And One That I Can Add to Excel 2010 or 2013 – I Hear That’s Important for Some Reason)

Maybe There’s a Future in this “Numbers” Thing…

It does seem like Microsoft has figured out that data is a big deal.  Every time I turn around, I am hearing of a new software development team joining Microsoft’s efforts in the Excel/BI/Overall Data Crunching space.

Often, such teams are merely whispers – shadowy rumors on the wind.  Friends disappear from their familiar roles and reappear in places they can’t talk about.

Other times, someone new to me walks up and just hands me a piece of nearly-finished software.

This is one of those latter cases.

Some Highlights

I don’t have time for a full tour today, and honestly I haven’t even explored all of the functionality yet.  So let’s hit some highlights shall we?

Read the rest of this entry »


Friday Bonus: Database Pros In Demand

January 4, 2013

 
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In a PowerPivot Environment, A Single DB Pro
Can Empower MANY PowerPivot Pros

Short Version:  Job Openings in the UK for SQL Pros

I’ve recently been asked to post about some opportunities for SQL pros in the UK – opportunities in which qualified candidates would be working closely with Excel Pros in a PowerPivot environment.  A situation that closely resembles what it’s like to work as a SQL pro at Pivotstream, or as a SQL pro working at virtually any of my training clients (who end up implementing similar collaborative systems).

Scroll to the end of this post for the details, but first, I want to provide some context – both for interested candidates as well as for all readers.

Better With a Database:  a Recurring Theme

For a long time now, I’ve been saying that you can get a LOT more out of PowerPivot if you pair it with a database.  For reference, see the following posts:

  1. Self Service BI Doesn’t Mean Desktop Standalone BI (one of my most popular all-time posts, at least in certain circles)
  2. Better With a Database Part One
  3. Better With a Database Part Two

The human element, and why “anthony” is becoming a noun

Stated even more clearly, an Excel Pro can achieve much better results when they collaborate with a Database Pro.  (Yes, sometimes they can be the same person, but generally speaking, the skillsets are distinct).

Read the rest of this entry »


Sign Up With Connection Cloud, Get My Book for Free

December 14, 2012

 
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Connection Cloud is Offering to Buy You a Copy of My Book, Click Image for More Info

The cloud data connection service I talked about and demo’d in yesterday’s post is offering to buy a copy of the book for anyone who sign up with Connection Cloud by January 15th.

A flattering gesture on their part, this is definitely a first for me Smile

Excel Pros – the world is waking up to our importance.


Cloud Data Approaching Critical Mass: Connection Cloud, SalesForce, PowerPivot, & Webinar on YouTube

December 13, 2012

 
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Cloud Data Like SalesForce Available to PowerPivot as if it Were in a Local Database:
My Long Wish for a “Data Highway” Gets Closer Every Day
(Click for the Webinar Featuring Yours Truly on YouTube)

Flashback 2001:  The “Data Highway” Concept

Back at Microsoft in 2001 when I was working on what eventually became Excel 2003, I pitched a vision that I called “Data Highway.”  (OK, not an original name considering the Information Superhighway thing coined by Internet inventor Al Gore, but invention is smart and theft is genius, or something like that.)

The idea behind Data Highway was simple:  all relevant data made available to the most popular tools (cough cough Excel), in a convenient and refreshable format.  No manual gruntwork required to “fetch” data in other words – saving your brain for actual thinking.

imageThere were three elements to the pitch:

  1. A common internet protocol for exchanging data. 
  2. “Teaching” Excel, Access, and other tools to consume any data source exposed via that protocol.
  3. A marketplace for data where providers like Dun and Bradstreet could sell data to be piped straight into Excel.

Well the protocol flopped and our VP killed the marketplace idea before it got off the ground.  Having good ideas isn’t enough – you can’t be too early, and you also need to execute better than we did.

Fast Forward to Today

Here we are at the end of 2012, and we have all three elements available in different (but robust and real) forms:

Read the rest of this entry »


Webinar Wednesday on Cloud-Based Dashboards

December 4, 2012

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Today’s “post” is actually going to be a series of small updates/announcements.

Connection Cloud is one of our new partners at Pivotstream.  They do something amazing:  they make your cloud data sources like SalesForce and Facebook look like normal databases.

Which means PowerPivot can connect to those sources and pull data just as easily as you pull data from a database like SQL or Access:

Read the rest of this entry »


Combine Multiple Worksheets/Workbooks into a Single PowerPivot Table

September 18, 2012

One of those simple but indispensable tricks

Back to a “real” post now after all the book stuff, but it’s going to be a short one while I get back on my feet.

Let’s say you have multiple worksheets (or workbooks) that all contain the same sort of data:

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Multiple Worksheets (or Workbooks), All Contain The Same Type of Data

You Want to Combine ALL of Them Into a Single PowerPivot Table

These worksheets all come to you separately, but really you just want them as one big table.

Naturally, if it’s a small number of sheets, and each sheet isn’t massive, you can just copy paste them all into one table in Excel, then copy/paste into PowerPivot, or link the table into PowerPivot, or export as CSV so you can import it.

And you could also use Paste Append to directly paste into PowerPivot.

But if the combined data set exceeds 1 million rows, you won’t be able to combine the sheets into one – you will exceed the worksheet row limit.  And a data set of that size is not something you can paste into PowerPivot directly with Paste Append – pasting large data sets into PowerPivot takes forever, if it completes at all.

Here’s what I do when I find myself in this position:

Read the rest of this entry »


Monday Bonus: SalesForce Data Imported into PowerPivot Without Programming?

July 30, 2012

 
SalesForce.com data loaded into PowerPivot (No Special Skills Required)

SalesForce.com data loaded into PowerPivot (No Special Skills Required!)

This Whole Cloud Thing Just Might Catch On…

We live in pretty exciting times.  Sometimes it’s simply amazing what I can do from my desk, without having to take off my Excel hat.  All of these various technologies available to us in the cloud, plus PowerPivot’s ability to talk to them…  the net impact really starts to add up sometimes.

All of the Tables Available, Just Select and Click Finish

I didn’t have to do anything “technical” to pull this off really, I just end up using the PowerPivot import wizard:

Simple import of Salesforce.com data into PowerPivot, just select and click

Simple import of Salesforce.com data into PowerPivot, just select and click

What’s the Trick?

Read the rest of this entry »


Excel 5-Calendar Date Table

May 17, 2012

Guest Post by Colin Banfield [LinkedIn]

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For some time, I have been looking around for a fairly complete date table in Excel for use with PowerPivot. If you are working with data derived from a data warehouse, a date table is perhaps the most common dimension table that exists in the warehouse. However, not every scenario involves working with a data warehouse directly, and I simply wanted a “portable” date table. I found very little online, the best perhaps being this Excel table offered by the Kimball group (the table has been expanded since I originally downloaded it). I could have modified the Kimball table for my particular needs, but I decided to create one from scratch.  Late last year, Rob posted an article titled the Ultimate Date Table, which is available from the Azure Marketplace. I considered using this table instead of the one I was building in Excel, but the “Ultimate Table” lacks fiscal periods. Much of the analysis work I do includes fiscal periods.

Read the rest of this entry »


Workarounds for “Canceled Due to Memory Pressure”

April 24, 2012

 
Ah, the dreaded dialog:

The Operation Has Been Cancelled Due to Memory Pressure

The Operation Has Been Cancelled Due to Memory Pressure

You can run into this error via a number of different routes, but one way or another, your computer ran out of memory while PowerPivot was trying to do something.

I’ll list some potential fixes here:

Read the rest of this entry »


Datamarket: Quick Followup

April 19, 2012

 
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“There are people out there whose jobs force them to be the place where two sources of data meet, and they are the ones who integrate and cross-reference that data to form conclusions…

…I think a lot of the world is like that.

-Bill Gates circa 2002

People are always asking me if I know Tyler Durden

I mean, I’m often asked if I ever met Bill Gates during my time at Microsoft.  I did, once, in 2002, when he wanted to review the XML features we were introducing in Excel 2003.

A few things from that meeting lodged in my head, and the quote above is one of them.  The first sentence is paraphrasing on my part as I don’t precisely remember.  But the last sentence, in italics, I remember word for word because I found it so validating of some of my own personal views and experience.

And I just realized, today, that quote should have been attached to one of the previous posts on DataMarket.

Real Reason for the Post:  People with V2 Don’t See the Same Thing?

Last week I posted a workbook that lets you download weather data from basically anywhere in the world, accompanied with instructions on how to customize it for your needs.

The workbook I provided was produced in PowerPivot V1 (SQL 2008 R2, versions 10.xx).

I received reports from a few people that when you got to the step of editing the connection in the workbook, you saw a different dialog than I saw.

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Is This What You See When You Edit Connection In The Workbook I Provided?

What I See

From the previous post, here’s what I see, with the two things you need to change highlighted:

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What I See

How To Make Required Changes If You Are Seeing the “Alternate” Dialog

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Click Advanced

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Fill In Required Info in These Three Places

That Should Do It

Let me know, again, if you have problems.  I am channeling feedback to Microsoft on this stuff so they can address any snags we hit.

Why is Microsoft paying such close attention to us in particular?

Because WE are those people where the data sources come together.


Apparently April 12 is “DataMarket Weather Day”

April 12, 2012

 
So cool…  Chris Webb ALSO posted today about downloading weather data from DataMarket.

And any post that starts with the words “I don’t always agree with what everything Rob Collie says” gets an immediate boost in credibility – very wise words indeed Smile

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Click Image for Chris’s Post

Chris takes a different approach and goes through the full online UI rather than sharing out a pre-baked workbook like I did.  My approach was intended to make things simpler for you.  Let me know if I was successful Smile