A funny thing happened in Redmond…

March 5, 2013

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Scene:  A Taco Joint in Redmond

Two weeks ago.  I’m in Redmond for the MVP Summit.  I’m meeting an old friend and colleague for lunch at our old favorite taco joint.  We sit down at our table.  I glance over at the booth right next to us, and who do I see?

The Microsoft executive most directly capable of altering the 2013 PowerPivot story.

When I was still working in Redmond, I might pass this guy in the hallways once every year.  But here I am, in town for a few days, and he’s sitting right next to me at a hole-in-the-wall taco joint two miles from campus.

A fateful, pulse-quickening moment.  What do I do?  (Story continued below).

An Update (of Sorts) on the 2013 PowerPivot Story

The most-commented post in this history of this website continues to churn, and I thought it was time today for me to check back in and tell you what I can.

I will say, up front, that I will not violate my NDA with Microsoft, nor will I betray the good faith of anyone at MS who opens up and talks to me.  Doing either of those would not be in my best interest or that of anyone reading this, since that would crimp any future information flow.

That message bolded above is aimed primarily at anyone from MS who might be reading this and getting nervous about talking to me. 

Got that, agent of Redmond?  You have nothing to fear from me Smile.  And really, I came here today not to bury Caesar, but to praise him.

First, a word on perception vs. reality

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22 Comments | Excel 2013 | Permalink
Posted by powerpivotpro

Guest Post from Ken Puls: How to buy PowerPivot 2013, and the $30 Volume Licensing Workaround

February 26, 2013

An Amusing Solution!

In the long-running comment thread on the Who Moved My PowerPivot Cheese post, one of the recurring themes is “hey, just let me pay a small amount extra for PowerPivot in 2013, but give me a way to buy it ok?”

At the MVP Summit last week, Ken Puls mentioned that he has a way to do precisely that.  You pay about $30 for the right to buy a Volume License copy of Office 2013 Pro Plus.

I haven’t tried this myself but Ken certainly has.  Consider this a viable workaround until further notice.  Take it away Ken…

The Official Purchasing Channels

Rob recently put up a post on the availability of PowerPivot in Office 2013, and how it wouldn’t ship in all Excel SKU’s. This is a huge issue, to be sure, so I thought I’d quickly summarize the software distribution channels so you can see where you will/won’t get PowerPivot if you buy into the 2013 package.

You’ve got two ways to buy a copy of Office 2013 Pro Plus (the version that includes PowerPivot):  Volume Licensing or an Office 365 Business subscription (the Home subscriptions do NOT include PowerPivot). 

Each can be further broken down (see Chris Webb’s blog on Office 365 options here), but to keep this easy to follow, I’ve kept it to key comparable SKU’s:

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The $30 Volume Licensing Workaround!

Now, here’s the really funny part about the above though… everything you’ve read so far would give you the impression that getting a volume license is going to be tough and expensive. It’s actually not.

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13 Comments | Excel 2013, Observations, Trends, and Wild Speculation | Permalink
Posted by Ken Puls

“Hey, Who Moved My (PowerPivot 2013) Cheese?”

February 14, 2013

 
PowerPivot and Power View Not Available in Excel 2013?

Are These Missing for You in Excel 2013?
The Short Answer is That You Need “Pro Plus” – “Professional” is NOT Enough

Overdue Post in Response to a Popular Question

I’ve been getting tons of questions about this – in email, twitter, on forums, etc.

The questions all go something like this:  “Hey Rob I just bought Office 2013, went to enable PowerPivot, and it’s not there!  It was supposed to be included in 2013 right?”

It’s a fair question of course.  And yes, my original expectation was precisely that – it would be in 2013 for everyone.

Well the short version is that Microsoft took PowerPivot and Power View OUT of most versions of Office 2013.

We will now pause for a moment of disappointed silence Sad smile

If you want to know how to “fix” this problem, skip to the end of the post.  First, I want to tell a story, because the innards of MS are often something that interests people.

“Why Would They Do Such a Thing??”

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206 Comments | Excel 2013, Observations, Trends, and Wild Speculation | Permalink
Posted by powerpivotpro

Mini-post #3 of 3: Are You Using Excel 2013 Yet?

January 29, 2013

 
Quick poll:  are you using 2013 yet?  (Don’t worry if you are not – most of my computers are still running 2010 but I want to know how many of you have already taken the plunge).

5 Comments | Excel 2013 | Permalink
Posted by powerpivotpro

Guest Post from Kasper! Excel 2013, Power View, top 10, “long tail” and how DAX helps

January 3, 2013

Welcome to 2013!

Hi folks, welcome back Smile  Over the holidays, Kasper submitted a post – yes, THAT Kasper.  Appropriately for the year 2013, it is focused on Excel 2013.  Not many people have 2013 on their desktops yet (even me really – I just have one “test” laptop running it), but over the course of this year I’ll be slowing “rotating” Excel 2013 topics onto the blog.

Anyway, Kasper and I decided to “hold” his post until today so that everyone sees it. 

Over to Kasper…

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“I’ll be back” – Kasper de Jonge

Ok its been a while since I blogged an actual scenario here on PowerPivotPro but here is another one :) . Its that time at the end of the year and folks here at Microsoft are out enjoying their vacation so lots of meetings get cancelled,  this gives me the opportunity to do one of the the things I love, helping users of our products get the solution they need and write some blog posts :) .

A few days ago I met a internal user who had 3 million rows of occurrences, products and dates in a SQL database and wanted to get some insights out of it, preferably in a highly visual output. We are fortunate here at Microsoft that we always get to play with the latest bits, so we have access to Excel 2013 that includes Power View.

In this blog post we will look at how we can show a top 10 list of best selling products in Power View and how we can solve a long tail problem that will allow us to visualize only the top best selling products in a chart and ignore the rest. I know these things are pretty straightforward in Excel (if you know where to find it) but it needs the help of DAX in Power View.

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4 Comments | DAX, Excel 2013, Power View, Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Kasper

Excel 2013 – Implications for PowerPivot and Excel Data Import Users–Part II

September 19, 2012

Guest post by Colin Banfield [LinkedIn]

In Part I, we reviewed the new Data Model (which is really just PowerPivot baked into native Excel), discussed the data import process, and other related issues. In this part, we further the discussion of Data Model, and review changes to PowerPivot for Excel 2013.

Creating Table Relationships with the Data Model

After we create a Data Model in a workbook, we can create, view, or modify relationships between tables. When we import multiple tables from the same relational data source, Excel detects primary and foreign key relationships and by default, creates the relationships automatically. We can override the default behavior during the import process. In the Import Data dialog box for Access shown in figure 1, we can clear the check box titled Import relationships between tables. For some other data sources (SQL Server for example), the check box can be found in the Select Table dialog box (the dialog box in which you select multiple tables).

Import Data Relationship Drop Down

Figure 1 – Import relationships check box

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2 Comments | Excel 2013, Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by ColinBanfield

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

July 26, 2012

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Our First Post on Excel 2013 Beta!

Guest post by…  Kasper de Jonge!

Notes from Rob:  yes, THAT Kasper de Jonge.  We haven’t seen him around here much, ever since he took over the Rob Collie Chair at Microsoft.  (As it happens, “de Jonge” loosely translated from Dutch means “of missing in action from this blog.”  Seriously.  You can look it up.)

1) Excel 2013 public preview (aka beta) is out, which means that now we’re not only playing around with PowerPivot V2 and Power View V1, but now we have another new set of toys to take for a spin.  I am literally running out of computers – I’m now running five in my office.  Kasper is here to talk about Excel 2013.

2) I’ve been blessed with a number of great guest posts in a row, and there’s already one more queued up from Colin.  This has given me time to seclude myself in the workshop and work up something truly frightening in nature that I will spring on you sometime next week.  But in the meantime, I hand the microphone to an old friend.

Back to Kasper…

Inspired by all the great blog posts on doing a Dynamic Top X reports on PowerPivotPro I decided to try solving it using Excel 2013. As you might have heard Excel 2013 Preview has been released this week, check this blog post to read more about it.

The trick that I am going to use is based on my other blog post that I created earlier: Implementing histograms in Excel 2013 using DAX query tables and PowerPivot. The beginning is the same so I reuse parts of that blog post in this blog.

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4 Comments | DAX, DAX Queries, Excel 2013, VBA / Macros | Permalink
Posted by Kasper