PowerPivotPro

Do You Get This Error From Time to Time in Excel 2010?  I Do.  And it’s Quite Fixable.

This morning, when I loaded up my workbook from last Thursday to start today’s blog post, I got this error.

For awhile now I’ve been meaning to post that this is very “fixable.”

When I opened the workbook, I had a cell in the pivot selected:

To make the error go away:

1. Click OK.
2. Select a cell outside of the pivot
3. Now select a cell inside the pivot again
4. Usually the error goes away

Just click OK, Select a Cell Outside the Pivot, Then Select Back Inside the Pivot

It’s an exciting day at the Collie household.  The one and only Chandoo is on a plane with his family right now, and I’m picking them up at the airport tonight!

For a huge Excel nerd like me, the chance to hang out with this guy over the next couple months is a massive gift.

Multi-Month Skills Swap!

For a long time, I had unconsciously assumed that Excel was a very structured and rigid thing – that all “experts” used in in precisely the same ways.  (At Microsoft, we were exposed disproportionately to the Wall Street crowd, and those folks tended to be rather homogeneous in their discipline).

But when I moved away from Seattle, the first time I sat down with Mr. Excel for lunch here in Ohio, we were immediately “swapping” techniques.  Sentences like “oh wow, I never thought of doing it THAT way!” were common from both of us. 

In recent years I’ve come to expect that as the norm.  Yes, we all do some things similarly.  But we all bring something unique to the mix.  Seriously, everyone reading this has some special angle on things that hasn’t occurred to others.

So the fact that one of the “magicians” of the Excel world is going to be living down the street from me this summer is Fan.  Freaking.  Tastic.  I’m giddy.

A Few Masterclass Openings Remain

I think there are still a few slots open for Chandoo’s Excel classes in Chicago, Columbus, Cleveland, and Washington DC, and the PowerPivot course he and I are jointly teaching in Columbus.  Check out the registration page here for details.

“Real” Post Still Coming

I still want to follow through on last Thursday’s post, so stay tuned.

Foreign + Banks + Wealthy = Not Quite Overwhelming
(But Still More than Half)

On yesterday’s post I got a comment indicating that most government debt is actually held by US workers in their 401k’s.  Clearly that was not my understanding, so I went digging.

And after I dug, I went to Excel.

And after I went to Excel, I went to PivotCharts.

The results are pictured above.

“Overwhelming” was Too Strong a Word.  “Majority” is Better.

Read the rest of this entry »

 
Folks, sorry for the short notice.  But the PASS BACON meetup in Chicago is TONIGHT – Wednesday the 10th.

I still don’t have the precise details, but if you are planning to attend, please drop me an email today.  I’m rob.  At a place called PowerPivotPro.  Dot Com.

Hey folks, another quick announcement is in order, and then later today there will be a “real” post on Excel 2013.

Anyway, here’s the news:

After careful consideration, I have resigned as an employee of Pivotstream effective today. This was not a decision I made lightly. I have enjoyed my association with Pivotstream and the members of its team. But as I considered the direction of my future work and my true passions, I became convinced that it is best for all parties if we parted ways. It’s been a good run, but every good thing must come to an end. I will continue writing this blog of course – that will NOT come to an end

After a short break, I will also continue my work in the PowerPivot revolution. Stay tuned!

Tomorrow is the last day to sign up for Chandoo’s upcoming online PowerPivot course. See my post from last week for more info, or click the image below to sign up.

So you know that searchbox in the upper right of the blog sidebar? Yes, the one that you probably tried once and it didn’t help you, so you never tried it again. Well, it now actually returns relevant results from the blog thanks to having integrated a PowerPivotPro Google Custom Search!

It’s pretty nifty — see below for a couple of search results for “FILTER()”, and give it a try yourself!

Oh, and today’s a big blogging day for me; more mini-posts and a regular post coming later!

 
Juggling a lot today including a bad cold that simply refuses to go away.  The regular Tuesday post will go live either tonight or tomorrow morning. 

Click to visit the course page

PowerPivot Going Mainstream!

Chandoo.org has long been a very popular destination for Excel people on the Internet.  I like to think of PowerPivotPro as a popular destination for PowerPivot people on the Internet, but we are still very, very early in the PowerPivot awareness curve.  I estimate that if you are reading this, you are one of the first 0.5% of the eventual PowerPivot audience. 

Take a bow, fellow “zero-point-five-percenters.”

So it’s really exciting to see someone like Chandoo building out an entire PowerPivot course.  This is no small investment of time on his part, as you can see in the course outline below:

Read the rest of this entry »

Today I started to write what I thought was going to be a simple model on viral growth / viral marketing.  But it ended up being a much more interesting problem than I expected.

In this case, “interesting” means”challenging.”

Stay tuned – tomorrow I should be ready, or I will give up and post on a different topic