Excel PivotTables and Dashboard

The step-by-step guide to learn and master

Excel PivotTables and dashboard
© Copyright 2019 HEIN SMITH - All rights reserved.
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Table of Contents
Introduction
Overview: Best Use of and Practice
Demonstrations with a Large Dataset
Project Flowthrough: Best approach to a project
Chapter 1: Version Compatibility
Backward Compatibility
How to Check Your Version of Excel
Licensing: Subscription versus Perpetual
Chapter 2: Basic PivotTable Functions
Office 365 Excel 2019 Build Features and Functionality
IFS (Office Excel 2019, Excel for Web)
SWITCH (Office Excel 2019, Excel for Web)
Other Office 365 Excel 2019 Functions
Forecasting Functions (Office 365 Excel 2019, 2016)
Enabling Power Pivot Add-in: New Pivot Table Controls on the Desktop Version
Implementing Your First PivotTable
Control PivotTables Using New PivotTable Defaults
Building a Pivot Table using Drag and Drop Features
Revamp Analyses by Dragging and Dropping Fields
Excel for the Web: Share your PivotTables with Colleagues
Read Only Mode
Editing Mode
Chapter 3: Automation and Efficiency
Shortcuts and Tips
Basic Pivot Table Shortcut Keys
Accessing Multiple Consolidation Ranges
Power Pivot Navigational Shortcuts
Automate PivotTables with Macros in VBA
Accessing the Developer Ribbon in Windows and Mac
Starting with Macros: Learning VBA Syntax
Common VBA Automated Pivot Table Actions: Create a Pivot Table
Common VBA Automated Pivot Table Actions: Modifying Fields
Chapter 4: Analysis
Overview: Process of Analysis
Providing Context: Creating and Managing Multiple Pivot Tables
Creating: Discovering and Validating New Perspectives on the Data
Chapter 5: Investigative Modeling using Pivot Charts
Principals in Data Modeling
Creating Visualizations
Interpreting Data using Visualizations
Chapter 6: Troubleshooting
Power Pivot Ribbon Disappears
Scenario 1: Power Pivot Ribbon Disappears
Scenario 2: Ribbon is not restored or disappears from Excel after Enabling Power Pivot
Problems with Adding Slicers
Scenario 1: Slicer button is Inactive
Scenario 2: Existing Connections Dialogue Box
Conclusion
Reference
Introduction
Welcome to the Excel PivotTables and Dashboard mastery guide! This e-book is intended for freelancers who have been asked
to implement analyses and consultants who help inform decision-makers. This book will empower you, as the data person, to
separate yourself from others in your field by incorporating additional value to your services through making adaptive reports.
This book is also both for the Excel aficionado and the intermediate Excel user who wants to get more functionality out of their
Microsoft Excel product. Regardless, the goal is to allow you to stay ahead of the other Excel power users with a sleek resource
and reference for your skills.
That being said, foremost, this book is a resource for mastering easy, powerful techniques to create, customize, change, and
control PivotTables in Excel. As you encounter analysis problems, you may return to this book to help strategize your approach.
This book also features some common troubleshooting issues to get you started on solving technical issues.
To begin, let’s discuss a quick definition of PivotTables. PivotTables are a collection of built-in tools that Excel uses to compile
more comprehensible reports from spreadsheet data, including data from various Excel files. PivotTable tools filter, sort,
rearrange, and calculate data to summarize databases .
These PivotTable features allow you to extract specific information into reports, which can facilitate better explorations of
trends in data and predictive features. How you extract and extrapolate this data, of course, depends on the purposes of the
report. As with any tool PivotTables ultimately only allows you to visualize data in different ways. How these visualizations are
interpreted and the conclusions reached depend on the analytical know-how of the analyst.
Expanding the functionality of Excel depends solely on the version of Excel of your client or employer. This includes PivotTables
and the functions used within them. Excel 2019 has added more PivotTable features that may not be backwards compatible to
an older perpetual license. This is important for freelancers and consultants because these features may not be viewable on the
client’s native desktop versions of Excel. This lack of backwards compatibility also makes it difficult to recreate and execute
newer features on older versions of Excel. Ergo, it is important when conducting your data dissections and compilations on
Excel 2019 or Office 365. Reports are always viewable on Microsoft’s office live online Excel client.
To begin, let us start with an overview of the purpose and the best uses of this text. The next section will give an exhaustive
overview of text features and how to take the best advantage of them.

Overview: Best Use of and Practic e

This book is a collection of supplementary information to review before and after the illustrated demonstrations. In addition to
being useful for individuals who favor additional instruction and illustration before application, this book is a superior
substitute for most online tutorials. Most Excel aficionados became this way through searching for features online. This is a
novel and resourceful way to learn; even this book includes the best sources for this purpose as well. However, these online
tutorials are scattered and not unified. This book unifies examples and demonstrations.

Note:
Important and noteworthy information will be separated from other texts accordingly. They will be separated from the main
text and can occur at any point in the book.
One useful site used to source our demonstration and references is the Microsoft Office Support site. Each demonstration will
point to its associated Microsoft Excel exercises for demonstration and practice (“Create a PivotTable to analyze worksheet
data,” n.d.) . This site is useful because it features samples and screenshots from several platforms. These platform versions
include Windows (PC), Mac (iOS), and the Microsoft Live web-based platform.
One of the limitations of the Microsoft Office Support site, however, is that the demonstrations do not feature more realistic
datasets. The majority of these datasets are simple examples, featuring incredibly small dimensions, i.e. 3x4 datasets with
nonsense data within. While these examples serve as a way to clearly demonstrate the functions, they do not demonstrate how
the function is actually used to solve problems.

Demonstrations with a Large Dataset

This book will also feature demonstrations using this large, 6370x17 dataset for practice:
http://www3.wabash.edu/econometrics/EconometricsBook/Chapters/Ch03PivotTables/ExcelFiles/EastNorthCentralFTWorkers.xls
This public workbook file was originally crafted for an introductory econometrics course. Specifically, the dataset was created
for their chapter covering pivottables (“Introductory Econometrics Chapter 3: Pivot Tables,” n.d.) . Econometrics itself involves
large demographical datasets. PivotTables require continuous data, i.e. data with no empty rows or columns interspersed in
between (“Create a PivotTable to analyze worksheet data,” n.d.) . Therefore, to create this dataset, the census data had to be
cleaned and formatted properly for demonstrations. This serves our purpose because it makes a comprehensible yet large
enough dataset to demonstrate the power of pivot tables.
For the purpose of our demonstrations, we will be focusing on these specific workbook dataset features:
● Raw “Data” sheet for performing exercises
● Named Ranges for large dataset management
● Summary of stats generated by Excel’s Data Analysis add-in
● 6366 individuals with 17 different measured variables
● “Q&A” sheet with simple contextual exercises
This large dataset will be used to demonstrate features on a more complex table, which is closer to what you might be using
these features for in the wild. As an effect, you will also be guided through real world troubleshooting and limitations for these
functions.
Note :
Demonstration portions are linked to their associated troubleshooting items in chapter 7

Project Flowthrough: Best approach to a project

With an understanding of the main features of the book, we can move on to discussing an overview of topics. This book follows
the logical steps from getting started, such as a review of basic functions, to analysis, and the finalization process for a report.
The basic flowthrough of the book can be summarized as follows:
(1)Version Considerations and Compatibility
(2) Basic functions
(3) Automation
(4) Analysis
(5) Modeling
(6)Reporting and Sharing
Note :
Instructions on how to navigate the platform will be given in path form. Using the flowthrough process of the book listed above,
in path form it would be:

With “Reporting and Sharing” being the final step in the instructional path.
Version considerations and compatibility will cover Excel 2019 and Office 365 extensively. It will also overview limitations of
previous, “perpetual” licenses. Understanding version considerations and compatibility is important for getting started and for
troubleshooting software issues. This book will also discuss meeting and anticipating often “unspoken project requirements”
for freelancers. Most of these issues occur in this section, but will be detailed throughout the book in verison considerations.
While this book is intended for both power users and users looking to expand their knowledge of Excel, this book will still
review basic functions. Expertise begins with a grasp of fundamentals, and even the savviest expert can learn new basic
functions. This section will help you familiarize yourself with the platform. All functions will be labeled for version compatibility.
Basic functions will continue over to the automation and efficiency section. This section will include ways of automating some
basic functions in order to establish more efficient workflows. Similar to the previous section, power users may benefit the
most from this section, including implementing macros using the Visual Basic (VBA) editor console.
Distinguishing itself from the wealth of tutorials available online, this book will briefly provide an overview of general
principals in analysis used to qualify and quantify your data. This book was crafted for the purpose of discussing analysis,
which is why the large dataset was selected for the demonstrations. The large dataset uses data pulled from a public source
with dynamic values. Demonstrations using this dataset will show you how to identify trends and how to visualize them. Using
these raw datasets will make it easier to discuss general principles of analysis. This book will showcase 4 basic analysis
techniques to get started.
This book will also discuss modeling features and point to specific Microsoft Support Excel features used to model data. As in
previous chapters, some of these features will be Excel 2019 and Office 365 specific. Some features will be backwards
compatible and will only be mentioned as a method of modeling in PivotCharts.
Note :
This book will only label Excel 2016 and forward. For Excel 2013 and backwards, please refer to the Microsoft Support Excel
Features.
Finally, the last chapter will focus on reporting and sharing This chapter will go into detail about Excel functions and PivotTable
features that allow you to transform huge data sets into clear summary reports. As the final step in the process it will
encapsulate the previous steps such as modeling and contextual aspects of analysis. This chapter will also go into detail
vehicles of sharing your analysis and best practices.
Chapter 1: Version Compatibility

Backward Compatibility

Note:
If you are developing a solution for a client, inquire about your client’s version of Excel. Make sure that
your sheet will work on their version of Excel; especially so if they are using an older version of Excel.
Google Sheets is a popular product for spreadsheets among entrepreneurs. However, Google Sheets is
not fully transferable to Excel.
Backwards compatibility is critical for troubleshooting sheet problems. Backwards compatibility is the
ability of a piece of software to interact with previous versions. Microsoft files are backwards compatible,
meaning that an Excel 2013 file will work on a newer, 2019, Office 365 version of Excel. However, an
unmodified 2019 Office 365 file will not be able to work well on a 2013 version of Excel. The Office 365
file will have to be modified to work on the 2013 build of Excel. This can be done through saving the
Office 365 file as an 2013 Excel file. This solution can be less than ideal because 2013 Excel files are
restricted to only Excel 2013 formulas and features. The majority of the PivotTable features and functions
covered in this text are from the latest Excel 2019 build. Therefore, a 2019, Office 365 file with
PivotTables and extensive reporting will not be able to work on an Excel 2013 build.

File Behavior for Microsoft Office Excel: Backwards Compatibility and

Forwards Incompatibility
This diagram depicts how different builds of Microsoft Excel builds
interact with each other. A “build” is a term that describes a specific
version of software. Microsoft practices backwards compatibility, which
means that more recent builds will always be able to accept older versions
of files. This is illustrated by the top half of the diagram.
However, newer files will not be able to run on older builds. This
“Forwards Incompatibility” is depicted by the lower half of the diagram.
Microsoft practices forwards incompatibility in order to encourage people
still using old builds to update to the latest software for new features.

Note: In Excel, “files” are also known as “workbooks.” They are called workbooks because each file can
have numerous sheets stored within them. This is a reference to accountants who kept their physical
spreadsheets in workbook binders. This distinction becomes important in the automation chapter when
you start consolidating different workbooks and sheets. You will need to know the difference in order to
instruct Excel properly .
Knowing how backwards compatibility works will inadvertently save you many hours of back and forth.
For example, let’s say you are a freelancer who developed an Excel sheet that calculates and reports
summaries of your client’s data. You used your subscription licensed, Office 365 version of Excel.
Your client downloads the sheet to install it into their outfit, but then reports that the product you
provided for them is totally inoperable . How might you begin troubleshooting? The very first step is to
determine what version of Excel your client is using. If you know that your client is trying to use a 2013
copy of Excel, the Office 365 sheet is unable to run on Excel 2013. While you can convert the file to Excel
2013, you may lose the very functionality that the client needed the Excel file to do.
Newer functions are not supported in older software builds of Excel. This forwards incompatibility is
embedded into Microsoft’s software model as a means to encourage businesses to update to the latest
build to take advantage of the newer, and usually more powerful, builds. Returning to our example, you
still may have some options depending on the sorts of features of the sheet. If your client only needs to
view the results of reports, you may be able to share the sheet using the Microsoft Live, web platform
version of Excel. We’ll discuss how to share sheets using the web platform with more specific examples
and functionality in later chapters.

How to Check Your Version of Exce l

For now, Microsoft has a backward compatibility scheme: newer versions of Excel will always be able to
load and render old Excel files, while older versions of Excel cannot handle new Excel file sheets. To
begin troubleshooting this issue, you need to check the license of your Excel.

File>Account Screen for Office 365 Excel

The target screen depicting account information. In addition to account
information such as the email associated with Microsoft Office Online
Live, if you have one, it also shows the current version of your Office
products.
For this text, we will be using an Office 365 subscription product. Excel
2019 perpetual license builds will have a slightly different screen .

To access the build and version of your Excel, perform the following steps:

1. Open up a new or existing document to gain access to the main menu

 Excel Main Menu
This menu is only accessible when you open up an excel file. This view
features the “Home” ribbon that opens as the default upon opening a file.

2. , which produces the “Product Information” page

“Account” Location
Be sure to scroll down the Excel: File screen to access the File>Account
screen. The Excel: File main screen was designed to be an aggregate of
information. There is a lot of information here about the file and other
files on your computer in some cases. You will have to scroll down and
navigate through to find the items you need.

Note:
You can use “ ...” on Excel 2016 and later.
Please remember that only 2016 and forward build functions and features will be labeled. While this book
may discuss features from 2013, they will not be labeled accordingly since they will work on all modern
builds of Excel.
The “Product Information” page allows you to see the license, who the license belongs to, and the current
version.

Licensing: Subscription versus Perpetua l

Microsoft has two licensing schemes: subscription and perpetual licenses. Due to the nature of perpetual
licenses, if you have one, you will constantly have to check your copy of Excel and compare it to the
latest Excel. Perpetual licenses, as the name suggests, is software that you own the license to forever.
These licenses are sufficient for home and student versions of Microsoft software. These licenses are
sometimes included with the purchase of a Microsoft Windows laptop computer. This can be a feasible
way to purchase Microsoft Office software as the average lifespan of a PC is around 3 to 5 years (Koble,
n.d.) .
However, one drawback of a perpetual license is that they do not get updated with new features. This may
be fine with software like Microsoft Word or Powerpoint. In contrast to other items in the suite, Microsoft
Excel is constantly getting upgraded through suggestions of beta test users (“Microsoft wants you to beta
test upcoming Office products and services | Windows Central,” n.d.) . Power users and beta testers will
then purchase a subscription-based license. A subscription-based license means that your product will be
upgraded with every new release. Microsoft offers its subscription software in a software suite marketed
as “Office 365”. In the year that this text is composed, both Office 365 and Excel 2019 have the same
features. The only difference between them in the current year is that the Excel 2019 refers to a 2019
build under a perpetual license. This current build will be referred to as the Excel 2019, Office 365 build .
Independently, Office 365 requires that you must pay a yearly fee. Subscriptions can become more
expensive than the perpetual licenses since new features are only released every 3 years or so. However,
Microsoft manages the software updates for you so that you don’t have to update your software every
three years. There are also other features offered in the Office 365 subscription license that benefits
power users, but this text will only focus on PivotTables and other features that make them a powerful
analysis tool.
As mentioned before, old features used in the analysis and demonstrations are backward compatible to
the Excel 2019, Office 365 build. These older features are also more friendly to old perpetual licenses. As
such, in this text, only newer features will be labeled accordingly.
Note : The Microsoft Office Support site labels older versions from 2013 and forward to help mitigate
“forwards incompatibility”. However, this is not a concern with an Office 365 subscription.
Chapter 2: Basic PivotTable Functions
When discussing software and how it can help us achieve a result, it is important to know the difference
between software features and software functionality. Software features are a list of tasks that the
software can do. Excel essentially is an extensive calculator that calculates items in real time cell by cell.
It uses various functions to achieve certain things, but these functions are just another feature of the
program.
Functionality, however, is how a feature can be utilized to achieve a certain result. We want Excel to
produce certain deliverables for us, such as reports on a given data set. Features like pivot tables,
functions, and slicers allow us to achieve the goal, but using these features is not the end goal.
Stepping back for a moment, the end goal of this text is to use these features in order to learn them. From
this perspective, this makes the concept of “functionality” ubiquitous. In other words, while learning
aspects of Excel, it may be difficult to grasp the concept of functionality right away because the end goal
is to explore features .
It is important to set this distinction between features versus functionality because it will help you deploy
Excel in more savvy ways. An Excel power user is not valuable for their knowledge of Excel features. The
power user is valuable because they know how to utilize those features to solve any problem presented to
them.
To overcome this instructional obscurity between features and functionality, this book deploys examples
with a “theoretical goal”. Specifically, each demonstration will detail the situational functionality of the
feature through providing an example. In this chapter, we will begin by covering new Excel 2019 formulas
can be used in calculating items within the pivot table.

Office 365 Excel 2019 Build Features and Functionality

As previously discussed, specific Office 365 Excel 2019 functions and features are not compatible with
older builds due to forwards incompatibility. Ergo, Excel files that use specific Office 365 Excel 2019
features will not be able to run on older builds. These Excel 2019 files can still be viewed on Microsoft
Office live online web client. We’ll discuss sharing and viewing files in detail in later chapters.
These formula functions are important for calculations within pivot tables. Formulas are functions that
are called using the “ ” sign that allow you to do calculations and other data manipulations. Each
function has a specific syntax, or a programmed configuration where you enter operands for the function
to operate on. They can also be used as expressions. Expressions are formulas that test if a given
condition is true.
Note: The Microsoft Office Support site has a living catalogue of functions with their build labeled. As of
this writing, they only have Office 365 until 2010 labeled, with no 2019. It can be assumed that Office 365
labeled formulas will eventually be categorized as Excel 2019 once the Office Support website updates.
You can view the catalogue at their website.
Here are some examples of new Office 365 Excel 2019 functions:

IFS (Office Excel 2019, Excel for Web)

In the past, to test conditions for several scenarios, you had to write a complicated nested IF formula.
This new formula allows you to run several logical tests as well as specify the value of each test if the test
is true (“IFS function,” n.d.) .

Here is the syntax for the formula:

While this function can take up to 127 arguments, the purpose of the function was to reduce large logical
nested formulas. Creating a large IFS train of logical tests defeats this purpose. For responsive sheets
where data is constantly changing, a function may be more appropriate.

This function is accompanied by , , , , and .

These functions can also be used on Excel’s web platform. These are functions that allow you to apply
some calculation when some conditions are met, where:
: When given several ranges, returns the minimum value among them specified by a multiple
expressions

: When given several ranges, returns the maximum value among them specified by multiple
expressions.
 : Function within the math and trig functions that, when given several ranges, returns the sum
of values among them specified by multiple expressions.

: When given several ranges, returns the arithmetic mean among them that meet multiple
specified criteria.

: When given several ranges, counts each cell that meets multiple specified criteria. This
function also uses arguments such as the question mark ( ) and the asterisk ( ).

For example, consider our large dataset and the function .

[Demonstration, pivot table count if greater than a certain percentage. Purpose is to identify ways of
segmenting the dataset that is more meaningful. Not helpful, for example, to look at people who make
more than $150k because there are so few in the dataset. ]
Recall our discussion about functionality: using features and functions to achieve a specific result. As we
have learned, the takeaway is that the advanced IFS functions applies various calculations on ranges
based on multiple expressions. This reduces nested arguments to achieve a specific result. However, the
IFS functions are better suited for decision making formulas, i.e. calculate the data in this way when a
condition is met. For dynamic sheets that have constantly changing data, utilizing a pivottable with a
may be more appropriate.

SWITCH (Office Excel 2019, Excel for Web)

In programming, switch functions are used to control the operations of program using a single
expression. In Excel, the formula would be used to display a specific result based on the data
provided. This is helpful for creating dynamic and adaptable pivottables and reports. Therefore, the
function is very useful for automating reports, which we will talk about at length in the next
chapter.
Here is the syntax for the formula:

This function evaluates an expression against a list of values and returns an indicated result (“SWITCH
function,” n.d.) .

Other Office 365 Excel 2019 Functions

The various functions and add more functionality to Excel for analysis and modeling in
particular, allowing you to seamlessly add more automated decision making to your sheets. These
functions are the most powerful in pivottables because they allow you to call on and calculate data more
seamlessly then in previous Excel builds.
Some other functions introduced in Excel 2019 were designed to make text handling easier. is
an updated version of the old function. This function has the following syntax:

It allows you to combine strings of text from various ranges, however, it does not include the delimiter.
For example the formula:

Would produce:

In previous builds of Excel, in order to handle text, delimiters had to be added manually. Microsoft
developed for Excel 2019 to add delimiters more quickly. The syntax for is as
follows:

The argument is required and indicates whether or not you want the function to ignore
empty cells. This is particularly important when using to join a range of cells. Returning to
our previous example, we can make the phrase more readable by indicating a delimiter.
Would produce:

Returning to our conversation about functionality, these text handling functions are useful for automating
labeling in PivotTables. Charts and tables must be labeled accurately. Using , or for
longer complicated ranges of text, allows you to also automate labeling. We will also discuss best
modeling and data reporting practices in later chapters.

Forecasting Functions (Office 365 Excel 2019, 2016)

One powerful feature of excel is using historical data to predict future values. Forecasting functions are
used to predict future values (“Forecasting functions ( reference),” n.d.) . There are several functions that
use different algorithms for different applications:
: Function that predicts a single future value given historical data using the AAA version
of the Exponential Smoothing (ETS) algorithm.

: Function that returns a repetitive pattern Excel detects from a specified

time series when given historical data using the ETS algorithm.

: Function that predicts a single future value given an independent value and
historical data using linear (X,Y) regression. Independent values usually occur in units of time.
: Function that returns a confidence interval for a forecast value at a specified
target date given historical data.
: Function that returns one of eight statistical parameters, metrics, or step sizes
given historical data. You can learn more about the statistical parameters available for this function at the
Microsoft Office Support website (“FORECAST.ETS.STAT function,” n.d.) .
This has applications in the financial sector for predicting the sales price of products or consumer trends.
These functions can also be used to mathematically investigate confidence level and statistical aspects
such as data aggregation step size, how the data collasacques into steps. As of now, these functions seem
to only be available to Office 365 subscribers. However, the forecast functions are available in Excel web
version .
Generally, all the new Excel 2019 formulas simplify certain computations including tasks that would have
required nested functions and text handling. The forecast functions are powerful functions that give you
access to data prediction and statistics. However, as we discussed, relying on these new formulas for
computations will make it difficult to view in older versions of Excel.
Note : New formulas can still be viewed in the web version. This can be a work around solution for clients
with older, perpetual licenses. However, these formulas can only be edited or manipulated with desktop
build of Office 365 Excel 2019.
These functions can be deployed inside of PivotTables to control the content of the widgets. Most
PivotTable controls can only be viewed in the web version. To implement the pivottables you need a
desktop build of Excel.

Enabling Power Pivot Add-in: New Pivot Table Controls on the Desktop
Version

Power pivot is the PivotTable wizard for analysis. It is only available for Office 365 subscription licenses,
the 2019 perpetual licenses, and the professional plus perpetual licenses (“Where is Power Pivot?,” n.d.) .
It is only available on Windows. You also need to have these desktop versions to use the wizard, however,
it is not enabled by default .
To enable Power Pivot for the first time you must initialize the Power Pivot add-in. To do this you must
(“Start the Power Pivot add-in for Excel,” n.d.) :
Note : Power Pivot is only available on Windows builds of Excel, including Office 365 subscription
products. As of this writing, Mac users do not have access to the Power Pivot add-in.
Excel Main Menu
This menu is only accessible when you open up an Excel file.

1. Go to

“Options” Location
Be sure to scroll down the Excel: File screen to access the File>Options
screen. The Excel: File main screen was designed to be an aggregate of
information, therefore, there is a lot of information here about the file and
other files on your computer in some cases. This can make it difficult to
find the information you need.
You will have to scroll down and navigate to the Options button to access
the options window.

2. In the Managage box, navigate to

“Add-ins” Dialogue Window
Clicking “Options” will close the Excel: File window and open a separate
dialogue window entitled “Excel Options”.
To access the Excel Options: Add-ins window, you must navigate the menu
to the left. The “Manage” box is a drop-down menu at the bottom of the
dialogue window. This image shows what appears in the Manage drop-
down menu upon opening the window. Click the downward triangle ( )
box to navigate to and click “Go” to access the COM Add-
ins dialogue window.

3. Check the Microsoft Office Power Pivot box and click OK.

“COM Add-ins” Dialogue Window

Clicking “Go” will close the Excel Options: Add-ins window and open a
separate dialogue window entitled “COM Add-ins”.
Toggle the “Microsoft Office Power Pivot” box and click OK. This will
instantly add “Power Pivot” to your main menu ribbon.

Now you will be able to access the Power Pivot add-in from the main menu ribbon:
Excel Main Menu with the Power Pivot Ribbon
Clicking “OK” will close the “COM Add-ins” box and instantly ad the
Power Pivot Ribbon. These items are disabled until you generate and
select pivottables to manage .

To maintain performance, Excel is programmed to refresh itself if there is a problem with the program. As
a result, all Add-ins may disappear. Specifically, this may cause your Power Pivot ribbon to disappear if
Excel closes unexpectedly while the Power Pivot window is opened. Restoring Power Pivot to the menu is
covered in the troubleshooting section.

Implementing Your First PivotTable

Looking at the Power Pivot ribbon, you will notice that the features are disabled. You must have at least
one PivotTable for it to be activated. For many of the features, you must have several PivotTables to make
the most out of Power Pivot features. Let’s start with creating and building a PivotTable of average usual
hours worked by sex.

1. Select the “Recorded Variables” section of the table

Using Keyboard shortcuts to select Recorded Variables: A3:H6370

There are over 6,000 rows. The fastest way to manage a dataset this large
is using keyboard shortcuts and the features of the table. Cell A3 spans
the section of “Recorded Variables”. Select A3, tap the
key, and then press:

This selects the whole table. To isolate the selection to the Recorded
Variables, hold:

It will automatically accept the bounds of Recorded Variables. This saves

time in scrolling.

Note: Creating a named range here is helpful for reducing table scrolling time. A “named
range” is a variable you can set in Excel that stands for a range. This sheet already has a
“Recorded_Variables” range, but it does not include our target rows and columns. To create a
correct range, once you’ve selected our target range go to:

A dialogue box will pop up. Name it “Pivot_Table_Values” and it should refer to:

2. Go to

Office 365 Excel 2019 New Layout: Insert>Tables Drop-down Menu

Excel 2019 has a different layout to access PivotTables. This may be
jarring to users on older perpetual licenses, or anyone using Microsoft
Support Online’s general instructions. PivotTables are consolidated with
the other tables in a “Tables” section.

3. Create the new PivotTable in Summary Stats

Create PivotTable Dialogue on Summary Stats Sheet

We are placing our first pivottable on the Summary Stats Sheet to in order
to keep all of our stats in one place. To access this (1) click on “Existing
Worksheet” and (2) in the “Location” box, click the up-arrow icon. This
allows you to navigate the workbook.
(3) Navigate to the “Summary Stats” sheet and select one of the cells.
If you would like a shortcut, after selecting “Existing Worksheet” you can
paste into the “Location” box. Hit OK.

4. Build the Pivot Table with the following: Average of Usual Hours Worked and Sex

Create Average of Usual Hours Worked and Sex

After selecting “Usual Hours Worked” and “Sex”, Excel automatically
populates which value should be in the rows and which should be used for
the calculated varaibles. It also automatically populates the pivottable
with the calculated sums. However, we want the Average of Usual Hours
worked .
To get the Average of Usual Hours worked, click on the down arrow
highlighted above and select “Average”.

5. Save the current work

Note: Using is the safest way to save your work. This is because navigating
through the graphical user interface (GUI) features such as the Excel:File window can cause
hiccups. This is especially true in resource intensive programs like most Microsoft products,
given our experience with the Excel:File interface. Using keyboard shortcuts to save your files
reduces computations in the program, thus decreasing the risk of program crashes.
To access “Save As” use or on some newer laptops. This opens a less
intensive save-as prompt window.

We will be using this pivottable to demonstrate the Excel 2019 controls in the next chapter.

Control PivotTables Using New PivotTable Defaults

The EastNorthCentralFTWorkers workbook has a Q&A at the end of the book that includes some
exercises and demonstrations for the course. These exercises and demonstrations are, of course, specific
to the econometrics course. One example is the stark difference between the total average of usual hours
worked and the simple average. These are statistic questions that we will not focus on here, but we will
create a bar graph showing the demographical data in later chapters .
This chapter will focus on how to manipulate the data on the fly using the pivot table fields. Our first
PivotTable entitled “Average of Usual Hours Worked” only has two variables. Let’s begin by creating
another, more dynamic pivot table called “Average Yearly Earnings broken down by Sex and Education.”
The steps will be similar to the previous section.

Building a Pivot Table using Drag and Drop Features

1. Select the “Recorded Variables” section of the table

Using Named Ranges in Office 365 Excel 2019
If you named your range “Pivot_Table_Values” in the first demonstration,
you should be able to select the range by using this drop down box to the
left of the formula bar. Using this drop down bar automatically selects the
named range for you.
The down arrow was added in this screenshot to help you with the
location of the dropdown. This arrow disappears when the drop-down
menu is activated.

2. Go to
3. Create the new PivotTable in Summary Stats

Creating an Additional PivotTable

We will be creating the additional pivottable on the Summary Stats sheet
underneath the first one. Click “Existing Worksheet” and copy the
following expression into the Location box:

4. Build the Pivot Table with the following: Average Yearly Earnings broken down by Education
in the rows and Sex in the columns
 Building a PivotTable using drag-and-drop features
Office 365 Excel 2019 PivotTable defaults allow you to drag and drop
fields as well. Click on the field in the list and drag them to the section
you want. It is better to start with (1) rows, (2) columns and then (3)
values.

5. Be sure to adjust the values to calculate the average .

Adjusting the Values

Upon generating the table, Excel automatically calculates the various
sums of each category. However, the example asks for the average. Just as
before, this can be accessed in the drop down menu underneath values. As
this is yearly earnings, this should be formatted as currency. Click on
“Number Format” to change the numbers into dollars.

6. Save your progress

This will create an additional pivottable with more fields to explore. One additional feature that was not
added were “filters.” Filter fields allow you to drill down into the data. The better fields to include into the
filter section would be independent variables that only have a few arguments such as State, Race, or
Month in Sample. Sex, only having two arguments in this dataset, is also a good canidate for filters. You
can drag these fields down to the filter section and explore how they help you segment the data further.

Target: Additional PivotTable for “Average of Yearly Earnings”

The values should always be added last since the table will always finalize
the table, hiding the drag-and-drop prompts in the pivot table itself. You
can always drag and drop fields in the add-in window to the left. We’ll
cover this in the next section.

Revamp Analyses by Dragging and Dropping Field s

In the EastNorthCentralFTWorkers workbook, the econometric students were asked to create a pivot
table comparing the Count, Count Num, Average and Sum of the variable “Usual Weekly Earnings.”
These are default calculation functions built into PivotTable Field manager’s “Value Field Settings.” This
table will help them compare the counts of data on the original dataset. This is the perfect opportunity to
learn how to manipulate tables while learning how pivot tables work with real datasets.
The analysis calls for a pivottable with “Sex” in the rows with various calculations of “Usually Weekly
Earnings” as the values. Since our first table already has Sex in its rows, we will modify this table for this
analysis. To change the values, take the following steps:

1. Select the “Average of Usual Hours Worked” table

This will bring up the PivotTable fields for the table. We will be dragging and dropping the items we need
from here.

2. In the PivotTable Fields window, uncheck “Usual Hours Worked”

3. Drag and drop “Usual Weekly Earnings” into the section
4. Click the drop-down arrow, go to
and select Count
Target Value Field Settings for Count of Usual Weekly Earnings
The drag and dropped item might have automatically populated as Count
. If it does not, you will have to change the settings yourself. Clicking on
the drop-down menu and going to Value Field Settings, this is what the
resulting dialogue box should look like.

5. Drag and drop another instance of “Usual Weekly Earnings” into the section
6. Click the drop-down arrow, go to
and select Count Numbers

Note: On the Value Field Settings dialogue box, scrolling through, you should notice that
there are various default calculations here. These are various statistical items that can be
used to model data. Excel included these stats in the wizard as a guide for analysis. Going to
the “Show Values As” tab you have the option to change the items to calculate various
percentages of. This is good for showing rate of increase on bar graphs or for building pie
charts. We will talk about analysis and modeling in later chapters.

7. Change the Custom Name field to “Count Num of Usual Weekly Earnings”

Target for Count Num of Usual Weekly Earnings and Naming Conventions
Looking at the pivottable at this point, the field names may seem verbose.
It is best practice to have descriptive labels. This makes it easier for
observers to comprehend the data. Further, it makes it easier to pass
these labels on to your charts and graphs, automating the process. We’ll
discuss automation in later chapters. While you are at this dialogue box,
be sure to change the number format to currency for the appropriate
value sets. “Usual Weekly Earnings” are expected to be in dollars.

8. Repeat steps 5-7 to populate columns for Average and Sum

Target for PivotTable Fields for modified PivotTable 1

After populating Count, Count Num, Average, and Sum of Usual Weekly
Earnings, the PivotTable Fields should look like the depiction above. You
can toggle the PivotTable Fields window off and on by going to
. While having the Pivot
Table Fields window opened will help you revamp your pivot tables
instantly, closing this window will also help you focus on the current
arrangement of data.
 9. Save your progress
The students were asked to calculate the various elements for Usual Weekly Earnings and compare them.
For example, Count and Count Num should be the same since all the Weekly earnings should have been
the same. However, looking at the data, not all individuals reported weekly earnings. For our purposes,
this is important for how we structure and clean our data in preparation for pivot table analysis.
Recall that pivottables cannot operate with empty rows or columns. This modified dataset works around
this limitation by using the conditional function to fill what would otherwise be in the dataset.
These entries would mathematically skew the average. It also does not reflect
what is happening realistically. These individuals, mathematically and logically, do not receive
. Replacing it with a string of text, in this case a simple cleans the data of
supperiferlous zeros and describes the scenario more accurately. This distinction can also let us
hypothesize and compare individuals who report weekly earnings versus those who report only yearly
earnings. We could postulate on questions such as, for example, “Do individuals who only report yearly
earnings more or less than their peers?” We’ll talk more about how we use data for analysis in a later
chapter.

Target for Pivot Table showing Count, Count Num, Average and Sum for
Usual Weekly Earnings broken down by Sex.
The image above depicts the final pivot table for the comparison exercise.
You should notice that all of the values have been formatted appropriately.
Proper number formatting helps with automation and creating models
later on. In the meantime, how might you have the pivottable report on
the percentage of individuals reporting weekly earnings in the dataset?
Hint: You will need to drag-and drop another instance of “Usual Weekly
Reportings” and use the
to calculate.

Excel for the Web: Share your PivotTables with Colleagues

The majority of the value of pivottables is being able to interact with large datasets in various ways. To
interact with data you must be on an appropriate platform for data handling, particularly in our case due
to the forwards incompatibility of Excel files. Recall our conversation about compatibility. Office 365
Excel 2019 files cannot run on older, perpetual licenses of Excel. This may cause conflict for colleagues or
clients using older builds of Excel who want to explore the data. This can be circumvented by using
Microsoft’s Excel for the web client .
In order to use Excel for the web, you must have a Microsoft live account. If you have a subscription
license, OneDrive and all of its sharing capabilities are included in the subscription suite. If you happen to
have an Excel 2019 perpetual license, you must have a Microsoft live online account. Once you have an
account, follow these steps to host your file onto your Onedrive account:

1. Click the button in the top left hand corner

Share Button Location: Top Left Hand of the Excel Main Menu
This is the location of the Share button in Office 365 Excel 2019. This will
take you to your OneDrive account. OneDrive is part of the Microsoft
Office 365 suite that allows you to store and share your files in the cloud.
You do not need a subscription service or even a perpetual license to
obtain a OneDrive account. They offer a limited amount of cloud storage
for free, enabling you to share and even embed your Microsoft files on the
web.

2. If you haven’t saved your file to OneDrive, Microsoft will prompt you to save here

Save to One Drive Prompt Window

In addition to saving and sharing your file on the web, this prompt also
gives you options to attach a copy of the file to an email through Outlook
or another desktop email client. It is still advised to use Excel for the web,
since the web viewer is uniform across operation systems and avoids
compatibility issues. Also, pivottables are more valuable as interactive
Excel for Web platforms than as static PDFs. Only use PDFs for
presentations.

3. To access your file on Excel for the web click “Get a sharing link”

Share Sidebar: Accessing your file on OneDrive

After clicking the Share Button and saving your file to OneDrive, a share
sidebar will appear on the left hand side. It will give you the option to
attach and send the file. To access your file’s OneDrive location, click on
the “Get a sharing link” at the bottom of the sidebar .

There are two modes of Excel for the web: viewing, also listed as “Read Only” mode, and editing. Both
come with their pros and cons, which we will discuss in the following sections.

Read Only Mode

Read only mode is the default mode for individuals who are not signed-in. You can also send your client
Read Only Mode Excel for the Web environments by selecting:
Share Sidebar: Get a Sharing Link, Read Only Mode
It is advised to use Read/View only mode links when possible. Microsoft
uses Sharepoint as its backend powering OneDrive. As a result, it’s not as
flexible with various people making edits to a file from different locations.
It can cause file conflicts that result in various instances of a file in the
OneDrive. Thus, the workaround is to only share Read-Only files. You have
the capability to manipulate pivot tables in Read-Only files .

Using Read-Only mode helps protect the original data of the sheet. Viewers can still manipulate pivot
tables by clicking on the pivottable and using PivotTable Fields, including dragging and dropping fields.
 Read-Only Mode Demonstration: Drag and Drop
Excel for web in Read-Only mode lets you drag and drop and manipulate
PivotTable fields without disrupting the tables. This screenshot depicts a
change in our first PivotTable, introducing “Months in Sample” as a filter
variable for the pivottable. This view is ideal because clients can
manipulative the data without destroying the pivottable structure. At any
time, they can reset the pivottable view by refreshing the page.
The PivotTable Fields sidebar is available by toggling the “Field List”
button to the left .

Another major benefit of Read-Only mode is that it’s automatic for people who do not have a OneDrive
account. No sign in is necessary to see this mode, even for people who accidently obtained an editing link.
This is for perfect for live presentations where you may have to do simple demonstrations labs of data
analysis. This is excellent for consultants who have to explain their work.

Editing Mode

You also have the option of sharing an editing file. This is good for teams who have an aggregate amount
of data, especially for adding additional datasets to pivottable analysis. As aforementioned, having files in
Editing Mode carries some risk. The sharepoint system can potentially add various files from various
sources due to version mismanagement in the system. However, this does help with tracking file versions.

Note:
When sharing editing links, it is always advised to save a seperate file in case of editing
mishaps, such as corruption due to a crash. While previous files can be restored from the
cloud, it is better to err on the side of caution.

Office 356 Excel 2019 has some features that are not yet supported on Excel for Web. Therefore, after
signing in, it will inform you that you must edit a copy of the workbook without the Office 365 Excel 2019
features.
Accessing Editing Mode
Excel for web in Editing mode requires that you sign in to your Microsoft
Account. After signing in, clicking the “Edit in Browser” drop-down menu
brings you to this prompt, requesting that you edit a copy in Excel for
web.
Going to
gives you the option to open the file locally on your computer in your
desktop build of Excel. However, this isn’t a viable way to share your file
to your clients or colleagues. Your clients and colleagues would need to
have an Office 365 Excel 2019 build in order to open the file. This is also
counter intuitive to sharing the file over a uniform platform .

Ultimately, in editing mode, you will have to deal with several versions of the same file. To keep down file
management, it is better to only share Read-Only files. If you must use a file management scheme, we
suggest labeling your files with the date that they were edited. For example, if today’s date was 10-14-18
and you just saved an instance of our example file with your work, then the name of the file would be
.
Chapter 3: Automation and Efficiency
While automating repetitive tasks can take a lot of time, in the long run it saves time. Time is saved
particularly because it reduces the chance of human error, simple mistakes that take a lot of time to find
and resolve. Therefore, it is usually worth the time to set up a process that will be used over and over
again. Ultimately, time saved is important for increasing productivity.
This chapter will cover Excel specific keyboard shortcuts for reducing computational time. These
keyboard shortcuts help streamline your working sessions by reducing the time you spend looking for
specific functions. These keyboard shortcuts can also be deployed in macro. This chapter will also cover
some light coding scenarios.
Modern programming uses a concept called “modularization.” To apply modular coding means that every
function within the program is focused on addressing one concern. If you consider Excel, all functions in
Excel use this concept. For example, executes conditional statements given several qualifiers.
combines and , however, it simplifies conditional summing into one function for
users .
Users can write programs and create custom functions that combine aspects of functions to do repetitive
tasks. Deploying this concept for creating macros, you should create custom functions that achieve a
specific goal and can be reused. The ability to create modular macros is a very valuable skill for Excel
power users.
Note: Same with compatibility, creating macros that deploy certain features will make it difficult to carry
over your set up to older builds of Excel. In order to make macros that can be used across a system, be
sure to use backwards compatible functions, i.e. functions that do not use Office 365 Excel 2019 specific
functions.

Shortcuts and Tips

Learning and deploying keyboard shortcuts in your interactions with Excel will help with productivity and
reduce work time. We have sorted the shortcuts into two categories: navigation, consolidation, and
general shortcuts. We will display the shortcuts for PC and Mac when available.

Basic Pivot Table Shortcut Keys

Using pivot tables, you can extract information and create perspectives from massive datasets. Using
these shortcut keys makes it easier to navigate between multiple tables and control data points. Following
are the shortcut keys for Windows and Mac (“Keyboard shortcuts in Excel,” n.d.) .

Table: Basic PivotTable Shortcut Keys for Windows & Mac

This table lists shortcut keys for navigating pivottables. Some shortcuts
may be recognizable to you, such as . However, this table
will explain how they behave while interacting with pivottables. These
shortcuts can be used in all versions of Excel.

Action Windows Mac

Select entire pivot

table

Toggle pivot table

checkbox

Group pivot table

items

Ungroup pivot table

items

Add pivot chart to

current workshop

Hide item from pivot

table

Launch pivot table

wizard

Accessing Multiple Consolidation Ranges

The Pivot Table wizard allows you to consolidate data from different sheets and different workbook files
in one place. Specifically for Microsoft Excel for Mac, the consolidation ranges feature was removed. It
can still be accessed using the keyboard shortcut (“Consolidate multiple data sources in a PivotTable,”
n.d.) .
To explore this feature, we will have to create another data file. To do this, we will save a copy of
as . This will ensure that the data are
in similar shapes and formats for the pivottable to analyze. Recall the data differentiator, “Usual Weekly
Earnings”. Some of the individuals do not report weekly data. This was determined from the “Original
Variables” on the right side of the data sheet. These points were cleaned and organized according to the
supplied code book. The “Recorded Variables” data on the right side is the interpreted census data, which
was cleaned and modified to be used in pivottables.
We will be be modifying “Usual Weekly Earnings” by modifying the function into an function.
This is a simple way of adding an additional condition that should produce moderately more reported
weekly earnings. It will also give you more practice with . This will make a mildly altered dataset
that we can compare with the original.
To create a modified data file, take the following steps:

1. Go to
2. Name this new file
3. In the new file, navigate to the “Data” sheet
4. Go to the “Usual Weekly Earnings” column, cell
5. Change the formula to:

Modifying Data using conditional IFS()

This formula is intended to artificially change the number of individuals
who report weekly income. This number will be random, since it is also
based on the next value. The tests for three possibilities: (1) if the
individual reported weekly income in the original dataset, (2) (if the
person didn’t report individual income) checks if the individual makes less
than the following person in the dataset in yearly earnings, (3) (if the
individual makes more than the next person) then they should report no
earnings.
Condition (2) ensures that more people report weekly earnings at random.
This randomizes this dataset and it will give us something to compare in
the resulting pivot table.

6. After computing , copy-paste to the rest of the column to randomize the data.
7. Go to the Summary Stats sheet and click on one of the pivot tables
8. Update the tables to reflect this change by going to:

9. Save your progress and note the location of the modified file.
Now we can use Multiple Consolidation Ranges to compare these two files.
 1. Go back to the original file and go to the Summary Stats sheet
2. Open the PivotTable Wizard press:
For Windows:

For Mac:

3. Click Multiple consolidation ranges and then Next

Old PivotTable and PivotChart Wizard

Using the keyboard shortcuts, this is the fastest and least resource
intensive way to consolidate several files.

4. Choose “Create a single page field for me”

5. Click the up-arrow icon next to the “Range:” box to select the Recorded Data section

Target: Consolidate Ranges from the modified Workbook

Once you select the file, you must also select the ranges you want to
combine. The input for the range will depend on the location of your file.
To get the proper location, it is better to keep
opened and search it using
the up-arrow button. Variably, the input range will look like:
The “fields” are cells used to label the data. In our case, we have 6 total
fields. The wizard can only handle 6. You will have to specifically select
the ranges from the sheet. In our case, those ranges will be:
. Selecting more than that will cause Excel to
crash.

6. Click Add and hit Next

7. Select a location for the new table

Note:
Pivottables cannot overlap. Be sure to have ample space for your pivottable. Otherwise, the
Wizard will tell you there is no room for your table, close, and you will be forced to repeat the
process all over again.
You may have to move around pivot tables by selecting them and going to:

8. Click Finish

Note:
If you want to edit the source of a consolidated pivot table, you must use the shortcut keys to
open the pivottable wizard again.
​ For Windows:
​ For Mac:

Power Pivot Navigational Shortcuts

Navigation shortcuts reduce the time spent on searching for different buttons and tasks. You must learn
these shortcuts to incorporate these shortcuts into your computations. Typically, if they save you time,
you will naturally use them, like the traditional for copy-paste in
Windows.
Here is a table of keyboard shortcuts and their function in Power Pivot (“Power Pivot keyboard shortcuts
and accessibility—Office Support,” n.d.) .
Note : Power Pivot is only available in Windows desktop builds. Therefore, this table is only for Windows
keyboard shortcuts.

Table: Power Pivot Navigation Keyboard Shortcuts

This table lists keyboard shortcuts and how they behave in the Power
Pivot widget. This table has been categorized for your convenience. The
“Basic Computation & Navigation” category, for example, includes many
shortcuts which you may already recognize, but explicitly lists how they
behave in Power Pivot. The other categories include table navigation
shortcuts followed by lesser known computation shortcuts.

Category: Basic Navigation & Computation

Key Combination Description

After selecting an item, open the context

menu for the selected item (cell, column, or
row).

Select the entire table (all for entire).

Copy selected data

Delete the table.

Move the table.

Rename the table.

Save the table.

Redo the last action.

Undo the last action.

Select the current column .

Select the current row .

Category: Table Navigation

Key Combination Description

Selects all cells from the current location to

the first cell of the column.

Selects all cells from the current location to

the last cell of the column.

Select all cells from the current location to

the last cell of the row.

Select all cells from the current location to

the first cell of the row.

Move to the previous table

Move to the next table

Move to the first cell in the upper left

corner of the selected table

Move to the last cell in the lower right

corner of the selected table (or the last row
of the ‘Add Column’)

Move to the first cell of the selected row.

Move to the last cell of the selected row.

Move to the first cell of the selected

column.

Move to the last cell of the selected column.

Category: Other Computation Shortcuts

Key Combination Description

Close or cancel. Can be for closing a dialog

box or canceling a process such as a paste
operation.

Open Go To Dialog Box

Recalculate all formulas in the Power Pivot

window.

Automate PivotTables with Macros in VB A

Power users of Excel know how to use macros to handle repetitive tasks. Macros are small, custom
programs that you can execute in Excel. The programs are written in VBA (Visual Basic for Applications).

Note: In many online resources macros and VBA are used interchangeably. Macros are the
executable script of instructions. VBA is the platform used to write a macro.
In order to use a macro, you must:

1. Enable the developer ribbon in Excel

2. Save the workbook as a “macro enabled file”
The workbook file must be macro-enabled to implement them. Microsoft established this “macro-enabled”
file type for all of their products, including Excel, in order to prevent malicious macros from hijacking
computer systems though VBA. This is why many offices outright ban macro enabled files. At the bare
minimum, Microsoft will always prompt you when you are about to open any macro enabled file.
The best policy for creating automated Excel sheets is to have a single, “production PC”, a desktop that is
able to run macros. The resulting data and tables should be saved to a regular Excel workbook. When
creating macros, keep this format in mind.
The VBA console, called Visual Basic Editor (VBE) by the Microsoft Support website, can be accessed
using in PC . To access the VBE console in Mac, the keyboard shortcut is
]. However, the “Developer Ribbon” must be enabled to run and set up shortcuts for
running your macros.

Accessing the Developer Ribbon in Windows and Mac

The ribbon must be enabled on the main tabs menu. In order to achieve this in Windows do the following
steps:

1. Go to

Excel Main Menu

Note: Most actions start here. Remember that you can only access
this menu when you have an active file opened.

2. Check the “Developer’s” box on the right and click OK

Target for Excel Options: Customize Ribbon >Main Tabs
This screenshot depicts the target window for the Customize Ribbons
section. By default, Developer is disabled. However, it is considered part
of the Main Tabs in Microsoft.

The Developer ribbon should appear. This ribbon gives you a variety of tools for managing your Excel
sheet, including Active X controls. However, your file must be macro-enabled to use these tools due to the
security concerns discussed prior.

Developer Ribbon
This screenshot depicts the resulting Developer ribbon. There are several
advanced tools used to automate your Microsoft outfit across several of
their platforms. We will be focusing only on building and managing
macros.

The steps are similar in Mac OS Excel 2019 builds. You can access the VBA compiler on a Mac through:
or
The macro manager can be accessed on Mac using:

Starting with Macros: Learning VBA Syntax

This text focuses on pivottables; therefore, we will be discussing common pivottable oriented macros. To
begin using VBA you must first learn this language syntax. Consider the following Pivot Table code pulled
from a macro demonstration resource (“The VBA Guide To Excel Pivot Tables,” n.d.) .
 Code Snippet: Create a Pivot Table
Screenshot of the code in VBA. In many cases you will be modifying code
pulled from Excel help sites. To use these effectively, you should learn how
to read them.

This is the calling function for the macro. This is important when deploying macro in other macro. All
functions take the form of “name”(arguments), if the function takes any arguments. This should be
familiar because this is how we call formula functions in Excel.

These are comments. Comments are indicated with a backtick and are not compiled with the rest of the
code. They are used to include notes in the code to make reading the code comprehensible. The
programmer of the macro was thorough enough to explain each action using comments.

This is where the variables of the program are declared. These variables are used to carry out the
operations of the program. This section is useful in identifying what parts of the program to edit because
it also tells you the type of variable. Thus, if you wanted to change some aspect of the program, you would
begin here.
After the declaration of variables is the main body of the program, this is where all of the instructions are
listed. This programmer explained each section of code and what it does. Some instructions you would
want to change are line 12 and line 18 , as they determine the range used to create a pivot table and
where the resulting pivot table will populate. In this case, this macro operates only on the active
worksheet in the window.

Common VBA Automated Pivot Table Actions: Create a Pivot Table

Let’s modify our example code for our purposes. Deploying this macro will create a new pivottable in one
click from a named range.

1. Save a copy of the workbook as macro enabled workbook with the name:
Note: Actions executed by macros are not saved in the undo-redo cache. This means that any
action a macro executes cannot be undone. Further, macro-enabled files cannot be autosaved.
This makes it difficult to obtain recent past versions of the file. If you are testing and
developing macros, it is best practice to always save a separate macro-enabled file.

2. Use the shortcut to access the Macro dialogue box

Macro Dialogue Box

Screenshot of the Macro dialogue box. This dialogue box is used to
manage, run, and create macro. Once this box is populated with macro
you can assign custom shortcut keys to each macro by going to the
Options button.

3. Type in into the macro box and click Create . This will start an instance
of VBA in a new window
4. Copy the following into VBA:

Sub CreatePivotTable()
Dim sht As Worksheet
Dim pvtCache As PivotCache
Dim pvt As PivotTable
Dim StartPvt As String
Dim SrcData As String

'Determine the data range you want to pivot

'This part of the code was changed for our pivottable
SrcData = ActiveSheet.Name & "!" &
Range("A4:H6370").Address(ReferenceStyle:=Pivot_Table_Values)

'Create a new workshee t

Set sht = Sheets.Add

'Where do you want Pivot Table to start?

StartPvt = sht.Name & "!" &
sht.Range("A3").Address(ReferenceStyle:=xlR1C1)
 'Create Pivot Cache from Source Data
Set pvtCache = ActiveWorkbook.PivotCaches.Create( _
SourceType:=xlDatabase, _
SourceData:=SrcData)

'Create Pivot table from Pivot Cache

Set pvt = pvtCache.CreatePivotTable( _
TableDestination:=StartPvt, _
TableName:="PivotTableTest")
End Sub

5. Click save and to execute your macro, click the small green triangle to run

Microsoft VBA Editor

This is a screenshot of the VBA editor. This allows you to create, edit, and
execute macro. In this code, you must be on the Data sheet in order to
execute. Otherwise, the macro will give you an error.
As this is programming, all instructions must be very verbose. Any errors
in syntax or addressing will generate a “Debugging” prompt. To see this
prompt, try changing one of the variables in the declaration portion of the
code and running the macro.

6. After the Macro executes, it will create a new sheet and a new pivot table that you can
populate manually.
Target: Macro Generated PivotTable
This is a screenshot of the new sheet generated by
. This macro allows us to automatically create
pivottable with a keyboard shortcut instead of manually selecting items
each time. This is particularly useful for repetitive reports that use the
same, named ranges every time .

Following are some similar pivottable automation codes that automate with pivottable management.
Create these macros on this file and explore them yourself (“The VBA Guide To Excel Pivot Tables,” n.d.) :

Delete a Specific Pivot Table

Sub DeletePivotTable()
'PURPOSE: How to delete a specific Pivot Table
'SOURCE: www.TheSpreadsheetGuru.com

'Delete Pivot Table By Name

ActiveSheet.PivotTables("PivotTable1").TableRange2. Clear

End Sub

Note: The macro requires that you have your pivottables named. You can
name your pivot tables by selecting them and going to:
Delete All Pivot Tables

Sub DeleteAllPivotTables()
'PURPOSE: Delete all Pivot Tables in your Workbook
'SOURCE: www.TheSpreadsheetGuru.com

Dim sht As Worksheet

Dim pvt As PivotTable

'Loop Through Each Pivot Table In Currently Viewed Workbook

For Each sht In ActiveWorkbook.Worksheets
For Each pvt In sht.PivotTables
pvt.TableRange2. Clear
Next pvt
Next sht

End Sub

This code is useful for cleaning up workbooks after your analysis. However, it is ill advised to assign
and similar macros like it to keyboard shortcut. Actions by macro cannot
be undone and this macro can potentially destroy your work.

Common VBA Automated Pivot Table Actions: Modifying Fields

Before creating macros that automate fields you must have an understanding of what fields are.
Pivottable fields are populated when you create a pivottable from a range. Excel recognizes fields to
manipulate them, usually the top row of a column that describes the data below as in our example. Recall
from the multiple ranges consolidation that the old pivot table wizard only recognizes up to 4 fields.
Conversely, you can program macros to manage fields if the data is going to have the same structure.
Recall from earlier in the chapter our conversation about modularization. Having a modular macro means
that each task is handled by only one macro. Calling these macro in a full script, a list macro executed
together, you can potentially create a pivottable with a few keyboard shortcuts in a few seconds.
Logically in your script, after executing , you can manage the fields with macros and
generate a report in seconds. Let’s look at . Similar to the macro,
this macro must be edited for the context of your dataset. Let’s look at a numbered version of the code to
analyze it.

Annotated VBA Language: Adding_PivotFields()

This is a screenshot of . You may have noticed
that this screenshot does not look the same as the VBA editor. This shot
was taken using Notepad ++, a free text program for editing code.
Notepad++ annotates the text in any language of your choice and also
provides line numbers, where the current VBA does not. As VBA is not
always available due to security concerns, Notepad++ is an excellent text
editor for editing and studying code when you do not have access to VBA.
However, you need VBA to compile and debug the code.

sorts predefined fields into a predefined pivot table named . Let’s

return to our first simple pivot table example. It called for “Sex” in the rows and the average of “Usual
Hours Worked”. We are targeting our new pivottable in the newly created sheet, so we will have to
change the predefined pivottable name to . Thus, our new code for
would be:

[Modified] Add Pivot Fields

Sub Adding_PivotFields()
'PURPOSE: Show how to add various Pivot Fields to Pivot Table
'SOURCE: www.TheSpreadsheetGuru.com

Dim pvt As PivotTable

Set pvt = ActiveSheet.PivotTables("PivotTableTest")

'Add item to the Report Filter

'pvt.PivotFields("Year").Orientation = xlPageField--Unnecessary

'Add item to the Column Labels

'pvt.PivotFields("Month").Orientation = xlColumnField-- Unnecessary

'Add item to the Row Labels

pvt.PivotFields("Sex").Orientation = xlRowField
'Position Item in list
'pvt.PivotFields("Year").Position = 1 --Unnecessary
 'Add Values Item in list
pvt.AddDataField pvt.PivotFields("Usual Hours Worked"), "Average of
Usual Hours Worked", xlAverage

'Format Pivot Field

' pvt.PivotFields("Year").NumberFormat = "#,##0" --Unnecessary

'Turn on Automatic updates/calculations --like screenupdating to speed

up code
pvt.ManualUpdate = False

End Sub

Note:
In this modified code we kept the old lines and commented them out. This is good for keeping
track of changes in your macros. However, this can lead to a lot of junk code in your macros.
Once you are done developing your macros, clean up your comments. Make sure the
comments are clear and describe each part of the code.

To execute this code, return to the newly generated sheet with the pivottable entitled .
Go to: and click the Run button. This will
populate the empty table.

Editing the “PivotTestTable” PivotTable with Macros

This is a screenshot of the resulting pivottable after populating it with
. After establishing the code, it only took seconds
for Excel to generate this data with a new pivottable. The best way to
deploy these macros in a modular way is to create a script that deploys
first and second .

This code combines some of the other operators and arguments at the SpreadsheetGuru’s list of common
macro codes. Following are some similar pivottable field management macros. Study them on your own
and use them to modify your pivottables:
Add Calculated Pivot Fields

Sub AddCalculatedField()
'PURPOSE: Add a calculated field to a pivot table
'SOURCE: www.TheSpreadsheetGuru.com

Dim pvt As PivotTable

Dim pf As PivotField

'Set Variable to Desired Pivot Table

Set pvt = ActiveSheet.PivotTables("PivotTable1")

'Set Variable Equal to Desired Calculated Pivot Field

For Each pf In pvt.PivotFields
If pf.SourceName = "Inflation" Then Exit For
Nex t

'Add Calculated Field to Pivot Table

pvt.AddDataField pf

End Sub

Add A Values Field

Sub AddValuesField()
'PURPOSE: Add A Values Field to a Pivot Table
'SOURCE: www.TheSpreadsheetGuru.com

Dim pvt As PivotTable

Dim pf As String
Dim pf_Name As String

pf = " Salaries"
pf_Name = "Sum of Salaries"

Set pvt = ActiveSheet.PivotTables("PivotTable1")

pvt.AddDataField pvt.PivotFields("Salaries"), pf_Name, xlSum

End Sub

This example macro code deploys xl consolidation functions to instruct the

section on what calculation to perform. In the plainest of terms, these are VBA arguments that allow you
to automate different calculations in the Value field. They are fairly comprensible and the most common
ones you will use are (“XlConsolidationFunction enumeration (Excel) | Microsoft Docs,” n.d.) :
: Finds the average
: Finds the number of entries
: Find the number of entries that are numerical
: Sum, which is the default calculation when setting a Values with VBA
You can find a whole list of other arguments at the Microsoft VBA support site.
Chapter 4: Analysis
Analysis is the process of evaluating data and creating new perspective of that data. Those who get the
most out of data analysis are those who understand the investigative process. Unfortunately, many people
tend to mistake Excel and pivot tables to be the primary tool for creating these new perspectives. These
tools may allow you to create a presentation. The impact of that presentation, however, depends on your
grasp of the analysis and the way you present your content. This distinction separates data entry
freelancers from business analyst consultants who inform business decisions.
One natural approach to analysis is asking the right questions. In this chapter, we will discuss the process
of analysis and overview some features that will assist in presenting your analysis. Recall our discussion
of functionality. Pivottables, and Power Pivot wizards, are features that allow you to achieve a specific
goal: creating new perspectives of large swaths of what would otherwise be unintelligible spreadsheet
tables of information .
After completing this chapter, you will be able to:
● Gather and arranging data for evaluation
● Reason context for investigation and evaluation
● Create new perspectives on the data
Finally, we will briefly overview data mining: using tech to pull trends from large data sets.

Overview: Process of Analysis

Pivottables allow you to view data in different ways, which enables you to analyze and report on large
amounts of data in a meaningful way. Analysis, therefore, is broken down into 3 steps:

1. Providing Context : Gathering and arranging data in a meaningful way

2. Evaluating : Asking questions about the data
3. Creating : Discovering and validating new perspectives on the data
Excel allows an analysis of large data sets through aggregating them with pivot tables and slicers. Pivot
tables are a tool that allows you to gather and assemble data from large data sets. Recall the section on
accessing multiple consolidation ranges . By using the keyboard shortcuts ()in Windows, ( in Mac:
), you can open the Pivot Table Wizard. This allows you direct access to the
consolidation ranges feature.
Meanwhile, slicers allow you to instantly change and filter multiple pivot tables. Slicers are also available
through the Pivot Table wizard once you have multiple pivot tables. While this feature allows you to
control multiple pivot tables, the slicer’s functionality are the different perspectives it creates to achieve
better visibility into data.

Note:
Slicers are only available on the desktop version. Therefore, they can only be viewed in Excel
for the web.

Providing Context: Creating and Managing Multiple Pivot Tables

Slicers allow you to filter table and pivot table data. Most importantly, slicers clearly label filtered states,
making the tables more presentable in reports. To use slicers for pivottables the following conditions
must be met (“Use slicers to filter data—Office Support,” n.d.) :

1. You need to be on a desktop build of Excel

2. PivotTables need to be enabled
3. The data must be in a PivotTable
4. Must not be in compatible mode

Note:
In order to save our example file, Excel put the file into compatibility mode. This is done for
files that may be viewed on different machines. To get your file out of compatibility mode you
must go to
After all these conditions are met, the best way to see the value of slicers is to have multiple PivotTables.
Let’s return to our large dataset example. The Q&A asks for 3 different pivot tables. Let’s rearrange our
Summary Stats page into a report by state.

1. Rearrange the tables using for each

item

Note:
This is also a good time to name each table. The suggested names are:

Keep track of these names. This is how the slicer will control the pivottables

2. Select a pivot table

3. Go to
Slicer Dialogue Box
This is a screenshot of the slicer dialogue box. The slicers automatically
connect to the dataset through the pivottable. Since these are essentially
filters, it is better to choose fields that are independent variables:
location, race, sex, and education. In this case, we are choosing location,
“State”.

4. Click on State
5. Select the slicer to make the Slicer Ribbon appear and navigate to

6. Select all PivotTables

Report Connections Dialogue Box

This is a screenshot of the controls for the State slicer.

Note:
All pivot tables have a filter section. However, this filter section is
limited to the individual pivottable. Using slicers allow you to
deploy multiple pivot tables in interactive reports.
 7. Save your progress

Target: State Slicer

This is a screenshot of the resulting slicer after selecting state. The Slicer
ribbon also appears, where you can manage what pivottables your slicer
controls .

Creating: Discovering and Validating New Perspectives on the Data

Similar to filters with regular Excel spreadsheets, slicers allow you to slice data into various views
instantly. Manipulating the data helps with finding new perspectives.
Comparison of Wisconsin and Ohio Reports
Looking at the State data side by side, you can see that there is a gap for
Females with 9 years of education in Wisconsin. Recall our misleading
scatter plot example. How might you represent this gap in the data?
Further, consider the quality of the data. Is this gap due to less rigorous
sample size? What portion of the report would support this assertion?

Analysis can be used to model results in a way that is both visually attractive and effective. Recall our
conversation about analysis and creating new perspectives. These perspectives are more easily
discovered when visualized.
Chapter 5: Investigative Modeling using Pivot Charts
If you were paying attention, you would notice that we only discussed two aspects of analysis in chapter
4, providing context and creation. However, in the overview of analysis , we stated that there were 3 steps
in the process:

1. Providing Context : Gathering and arranging data in a meaningful way

2. Evaluating : Asking questions about the data
3. Creating : Discovering and validating new perspectives on the data
Evaluation of data depends solely on the type of data you are analyzing and, therefore, deserves its own
chapter. Aspects of evaluation and investigation for all sorts of datasets are found in data modeling.
Modeling data is an important step for creating new perspectives on data. It allows you to visibly see the
data in a meaningful way and investigate through a series of informed questions. The majority of these
questions are “how” and “why” questions, since the others (what, when, who) can already be answered by
the charts of data in front of you.
After you’ve investigated and found your conclusions, modeling is also critical for communicating these
perspectives on data. For the audiences that you are presenting your information to, modeling is often the
only way to communicate your findings. More information can be gleaned from a visualization like a chart
or a graph than from numbers from a table.
The communicative property of visualization is particularly the case for large data sets. For big data,
which can be several thousand rows and columns, data can only be presented with a map. This chapter
will cover basic principles in data modeling, creating visualizations, and building maps.

Principals in Data Modeling

When using modeling to investigate data, a chart or a graph is more adept at answering “how” and “why”
questions. For example, consider our large data set. This dataset can technically answer all the other non-
analysis questions on its own with the help of a few filters and a formula. For example:
“Who”
Do men who have greater than 12 years of education make more than [Y] dollars?
“Where”
Where are women least likely to make less than [Y] dollars?
“When ”
Given the month in sample, when do the highest ranges occur?
“What”
What is the lowest earning in each state?
However, if we were to generate a few linear regressions over an (X,Y) plane, then we could answer
questions such as:
“How do years of education [X] determine yearly salary [Y] for females”?
If in our theoretical graph the line goes [up], it would indicate that [Y] had an increase over the years of
[X]. This is the value that modeling brings to analysis: it provides trends that tell us “how” things happen
and may even glean “why” things happen with a little more context. Ergo, charts tracking several items
are more prepared to answer “why” since we can compare the axises to each other and comment on
causality. However, you must be careful with this line of questioning in statistics. More context is usually
needed to confirm acertations of “why,” usually confirming with contextual research such as interviews.
Acertainations gleaned from statistical analysis are still useful because they can inform a beginning
hypothesis for you to test. Even more importantly, there are rules in modeling to ensure that presented
data can give you the most accurate acertaintions to test.
Charts that are incorrectly modeled can skew data and, therefore, can skew insights. This can be
disastrous for analysts, since they can easily come to the wrong conclusions. When we move on to
presenting our data, being a data analyst requires a level of integrity: charts can visually skew data for
audiences as well. Analysts who use this knowledge to purposefully skew charts to confirm their
worldview lack scientific integrity. Knowing these modeling rules can help you recognize human error as
well as purposeful meddling. Following these rules ensures accurate modeling:

1. Use an expected range on the independent axis. The independent axis is the “X” axis on
charts. This axis usually represents units of time or some other independent variable. Always
start the graph at 0 or at “time-zero” as the marked beginning of your dataset. The x-axis
should always be increasing. Do not “break” the independent axis, i.e. you must have a
 continuous number line starting from zero. If you have a large gap in the [Y] axis from your
starting point, instead, use a rate that accurately reflects the data. Excel’s charts and graphs
do this automatically for you.

Scatterplot with a broken Independent axis: Missing Values

This is an example of a graph with a broken X axis. More specifically, this
dataset is a scatter plot with all of the odd years removed (“File:Scatter
Plot with missing categories.svg—Wikimedia Commons,” n.d.) . As a
scatter plot, all data points on the graph must be represented by a point.
If the value for 1999 was zero, for example, it must be included. Removing
the odd “Years,” not only breaks the X axis, it removes 50% of the data,
which makes this graph broken.

2. Use an expected range on the dependent axis. Dependent axis is usually the item you’re
measuring or topic of the graph. Don’t ‘break’ the dependent axis. Use a rate that accurately
reflects the data.

Bar Graph with no defined range

This is a side by side comparison of a graph representing undefined Y
axis. Technically both A and B are the same same values. However, there
is no point representing zero and there is no established rate of increase
(“Bar graph missing zero1—Misleading graph—Wikipedia,” n.d.;
“File:Example truncated bar graph.svg—Wikimedia Commons,” n.d.) .

3. Clearly label units : percentages, currency, time, etc

4. Percentages should always add up to 100% on a pie chart
a. Exception: Rate of increase, e.g. some item increased [Y%] over [X] time
b. Rate of increase will always be over time, and therefore, will be represented on a
graph, not a pie chart.
c. Be sure to label clearly the period of time for each increase
d. The rate of time will be uniform, i.e., 1 year
5. Always use a descriptive title: .e.g. “Measurement of [Y] over [X] for [Length of X]”
Visualization rules always depend on what sort of data you’re representing. Recall the listed rule about
percentages. Percentages are a ratio, a method of showing relation between data points without getting
hung up on the value of numbers. A value of 100 is greater than 7, for example, but with percentages we
know that 100 is 93% greater than 7. This example is easy because 100 is a ‘clean’ number that is easier
to comprehend, like all the powers of 10. However, when you change the values to numbers you are more
likely to see in the wild, $171.64 increasing to $2,452.00, the 93% increase is easier to graph.
Taking this example, how to represent this data is dependent on the context. This 93% increase is easier
shown on a graph if it occured over time. Conversely, if the data is accompanied by other values that are
part of a whole, it would be more appropriate to represent them with a pie chart, which visually
demonstrates the values’ relation to one another. If the $171.64 instead represented expenditures of a
$2,452.00 budget, an easier way to express this relation is with a 7% slice of a pie.
That being said, the rules above mainly focus on general best practices for X,Y graphs: bar charts, line
charts, and other graphs with axes. Some of these items apply to other charts, like 3 through 5. To ensure
the integrity of your models, you should review the rules for other charts that are available on Excel such
as sunburst or whisker plots. Due to the impact of inaccurate investigative modeling, Excel has guides for
charts and graphs using wizards. The next sections will cover how to use these wizards for accurate
modeling.

Creating Visualizations

In the Q&A, the course asks students to create a bar graph and a demographics table. However, these
require variables outside of our focus. For now, we will create a two visualizations comparing the state of
Wisconsin and the state of Ohio.

Note: The slicer has the added benefit of reducing the amount of work needed to generate two
separate graphs. This is because the slicer also controls charts and graphs generated using
the tables. You can switch between views by toggling the slicer.

1. Select the pivottable

2. Go to and select Clustered Column

The fields are already propagated for you in the wizard

3. Select OK

Target: Ohio Bar Graph

This screenshot depicts the Pivot Chart generated after the listed steps. It
can be toggled between any of the five listed states with the slicer
depicted alongside. Selecting the paintbrush allows you to modify the
appearance of the chart. The plus sign lets you toggle the various chart
elements on and off such as different axises, their titles, and even
including a trend line. The graph can also be isolated along either
independent variable (Sex, Education).

4. Save your progress

Interpreting Data using Visualization s

A large part of modeling is reporting on data. In the last chapter we covered modeling as an investigative
tool in analysis. Rendering these models accurately can give you visual insight into how and why data
behaves. This creates a model so you can analyze the data properly.
However, simply copying and pasting your models for presentation is not enough. To report your findings
to others requires additional steps, including arranging models and data in a meaningful way to convey
your findings. Many of these steps are dependent on your client, but the majority of these steps involve
providing context for your visualizations. This context and composition is important for pointing people to
the correct conclusions. Take, for example, our previous example studying the different perspectives of
the data broken down by state. By including the State slicer and connecting it to all of the created
pivottables, we have created a dynamic dashboard that can be toggled between all 5 states.

Ohio and Wisconsin Pivot Chart Comparison

These two screenshots are two shots of a dynamic pivot chart broken
down by state. Recall our side by side comparison of the Pivottables in an
earlier section. Also recall the question about representing the gap in the
Wisconsin data. Are they well represented using this bar graph ?

In the previous section about analysis we discussed at length the need for “how” and “why” questions to
complete analysis. With these detailed charts and graphs, we can easily postulate about why the aspect of
the data occurs. For example, one possible question inspired by the Wisconsin pivottable was “Why is
there a gap in the data for females with only 9 years of education?” Looking at the total count of data for
Wisconsin, one can hypothesize that it is due to the small sample size in comparison with another state
like Ohio. Just looking at the total values, Ohio had roughly three times as many females reporting than
Wisconsin. Comparing 200 indivuals to 600, that is a difference of about 400 indivuals.
However, looking at the pivottables, it is difficult to make a conclusion about trends. It is only when the
data is properly visualized that we can come to some conclusions. Datasets with a small population size
tend to have chaotic trends. This is because there are fewer individual data points that could lend
themselves to a smooth trend. Therefore, it is difficult to identify a curve or a pattern with smaller
population sizes. Going by this reasoning, we would expect that Wisconsin would have no identifiable
shapes or trends.
With this hypothesis and comparing it to the actual data, the opposite seems to be true. Wisconsin,
despite the lack of females in one of its data points, has a more identifiable shape. The bars form a rolling
hill shape indicating a healthy dataset. There may be no data at this datapoint because of how narrowly
the chart is broken down. There simply may have been no females with only 9 years of education who
reported a salary.
Ohio, in contrast, has one large outlier, particularly at 9 years of education. There could be several
reasons for this, including industry trends within Ohio. For example, there could be a large push for high
paying positions that don’t require a college degree, such as union jobs where people progress to higher
pay grades on seniority. Someone who started working earlier and did not attend college would,
therefore, make more money in this scenario. The only way to confirm this is through investigative
research such as interviews, or looking at additional variables such as age.
One possible approach to research is to get more data. This dataset was originally collected in March
1999. There have been several censuses conducted since then. Further, getting and cleaning the data
would be easy with the skills we have practiced. After converting the worksheet to a template, we can
generate recorded variables using the formulas already in the sheet. Further, you can build macros to
generate pivot tables since the data will be structured in the same way. Finally, you could build dynamic
self-service reporting systems through macro, even comparing the different census datasets with one
another.
Chapter 6: Troubleshooting
This final chapter will cover troubleshooting scenarios. Thesce solutions are indexed by the scenarios that
they address. This chapter will also refer to the associated activity or demonstration, which is good for
practicing work arounds.

Power Pivot Ribbon Disappears

Sometimes your Add-ins may disappear if Excel restarts itself. To restore the Power Pivot Ribbon in your
main menu, follow this step by step solution from Microsoft (“Start the Power Pivot add-in for Excel,”
n.d.) .

Scenario 1: Power Pivot Ribbon Disappears

1. Go to

“Options” Location
Be sure to scroll down the Excel: File screen to access the File>Options
screen. The Excel: File main screen was designed to be an aggregate of
information, therefore, there is a lot of information here about the file and
other files on your computer in some cases. This can make it difficult to
find the information you need.
You will have to scroll down and navigate to the Options button to access
the options window.

2. In the Manage drop-down menu, click

“Add-ins” Dialogue Window
Clicking “Options” will close the Excel: File window and open a separate
dialogue window entitled “Excel Options”.
To access the Excel Options: Add-ins window, you must navigate the menu
to the left. The “Manage” box is a drop-down menu at the bottom of the
dialogue window. This image shows what appears in the Manage drop-
down menu upon opening the window. Click the downward triangle ( )
box to navigate to

3. Select Microsoft Office Power Pivot and then click Enable.

Disabled Items Dialogue Box

Clicking “OK” will prompt the Disabled Items Box. If Power Pivot was
disabled it will appear in this menu. If Power Pivot isn’t here, it is enabled,
but it still isn’t showing in the main menu, then proceed to the next
scenario.

Scenario 2: Ribbon is not restored or disappears from Excel after Enabling Power
Pivot
 Note: This solution requires edits to the system Registry. Many outfits require administrative
privileges to edit the Registry, since it can affect your computer’s entire operating system.
You may have to get your office admin to use this solution.
If you have the privileges to make the edits yourself, take caution! Do not make any changes
to the Registry without creating a restoration point first! This can be done through (“How to
Create a System Restore Point in Windows 7,” n.d.) :
1. ​
2. ​ Click on the link
3. ​ In the “System Protection” Dialogue box, click the tab
4. ​ Click on button and follow the prompts

If the Power Pivot ribbon still doesn’t appear, you will have to access the Registry Editor and make
changes there. Follow these steps (“Start the Power Pivot add- in for Excel,” n.d.) :

Note: Remember that the Power Pivot Add-in is only available for Windows desktop builds of
Excel.

1. Close Excel and go to , type in “regegit”.

Run Dialogue Box

Going to brings up the depicted small dialogue box. The Run
dialogue box allows you to execute programs using their file name. This
dialogue box can also be called using this keyboard shortcut:
. Type in “regedit” and click okay to access
Windows’ Registry Editor.

2. Copy:
into the address bar at the top of the Registry Editor.
Be sure that there are no ellipses. “[...]”

Registry Editor Window: “...\User Settings\PowerPivotExcelAddin…”

Depicts the contents of the …\User Settings\PowerPivotExcelAddin Folder.
You can either navigate to
 or you
can copy in the root address depicted in the address bar. If you choose to
copy in the root, the Register Key is case sensitive. The root must be
copied verbatim.

3. On the folder navigation menu on the left hand side, PowerPivotExcelAddin folder should
be highlighted. the folder.

Registry Editor Window Navigation: “...\User

Settings\PowerPivotExcelAddin…”
Depicts the folder navigation menu on the left-hand side of the Registry
Editor window. Whether you pasted the root or navigated to the folder,
this screenshot illustrates your target in the Registry Editor window.

4. Copy:
into the address bar at the top
of the Registry Editor. Be sure that there are no spaces.

Registry Editor Window: “...\Addins\PowerPivotExcelClientAddin…”

Depicts the contents of the …
\Addins\PowerPivotExcelClientAddin.NativeEntry.1 Folder. You can either
navigate to

or you
can copy in the root address depicted in the address bar. If you choose to
copy in the root, the Register Key is case sensitive. The root must be
copied verbatim.

5. On the folder navigation menu on the left hand side, the

PowerPivotExcelClientAddIn.NativeEntry.1 folder should be highlighted.
the folder.

Registry Editor Window Navigation:

“...\Addins\PowerPivotExcelClientAddin…”
Depicts the folder navigation menu on the left-hand side of the Registry
Editor window. Whether you pasted the root or navigated to the folder,
this screenshot illustrates your target in the Registry Editor window.

6. Close the Registry Editor

After completing these steps you have reset the Power Pivot Add-in on Excel. You have reinitialize as if it
is a brand new install. Return to the demonstration in chapter 2 and redo the steps to gain access to the
Power Pivot Add-in.

Problems with Adding Slicer s

The Slicers is an Office 365 Excel 2019 feature that allows you to dynamically change the data. We
covered how to deploy them in chapter about analysis in the “Creating: Discovering and validating new
perspectives on the data” section. This troubleshooting section will cover problems with adding slicers.

Scenario 1: Slicer button is Inactive

Recall from chapter 1 that all modern Excel products are controlled by their licenses. For those who have
a subscription service, their subscription controls what features their build of Excel will allow them to
have. This same subscription based service also monitors the types of files opened on Excel. While you
can open and operate an older Excel file in Office 365 Excel 2019, that file will be placed in compatibility
mode to ensure the best experience. As an effect, files in compatibility mode won’t have access to some
features. One of those features is the advanced slicer and filter features.
To gain access to the slicer feature your file must not be in compatibility mode. Here are the steps for
getting your file out of compatibility mode:

1. Go to and click on Convert

 File>Info: Compatibility Mode
This screenshot depicts the default window that populates when you
select File. This view only happens when your file is in compatibility mode.
Older Excel files are placed in compatibility mode to improve
performance. However, this can prevent you from using new Office 365
Excel 2019 features such as the improved slicers. Our example file was
generated on an older build of Excel, therefore, it was automatically
placed in compatibility mode.

2. Go back to your pivottable and you should have access to slicers.

If you still don’t have slicers enabled, revisit the conditions for using slicers. For your convenience, the 4
conditions were:

1. You need to be on a desktop build of Excel

2. PivotTables need to be enabled
3. The data must be in a PivotTable
4. Must not be in compatible mode
Finally, ensure that you are engaging with a table or a pivottable. Excel spreadsheets themselves are not
tables but just cells with data. Tables, and subsequently pivottables, are a recognized object within Excel .

Scenario 2: Existing Connections Dialogue Box

This dialogue box may pop up after going to or while you are trying to
segment your pivottables.
Existing Connections Dialogue Box
Screenshot of the dialogue box that propagates when no table or pivot
table is selected. This is a verbose error that is trying to communicate a
lack of a target.

This error occurs when no table or pivottable is targeted. The solution is to close the window and select a
pivot table or table.
Conclusion
This text follows the logical steps from getting started to finalizing a report. First and foremost, you must
consider Excel versions and compatibility. This often makes the difference between a freelance data entry
and consulting analyst position. Excel files are backwards compatible, meaning that newer builds of Excel
will always be able to execute older Excel files. However, Microsoft uses a forwards incompatibility
model, and older perpetual licenses are not able to execute newer Excel files. This is important because
your client will not be able to review the delivered pivot tables embedded in an Office 365 Excel 2019 file
on their old perpetual licensed build. One immediate work around is to present your build on Excel for the
web, which is capable of displaying all Excel 2019 features.
This text also overviewed the new Office 365 Excel 2019 functions, which were engineered to reduce
expression complexity. These conditional statements and decision based switching functions add a
powerful tool for automation outside of VBA. Deploying these functions in pivottables also make the Excel
for the web work around more feasible, since Excel for web does not have access to macro (“Work with
VBA macros in Excel for the web,” n.d.) . It is also good since many corporate outfits either limit or ban
the use of macro-enabled files for security. Learning how to create macros in VBA is still an excellent
“Excel power-user” skill, since it saves time in research and development outfits where macro enabled
files are more tolerated. Using modular macros that handle repetitive analytical and report generating
tasks is the best practice for using macros. Having one dedicated macro enabled machine for creating
reports is also best practice for security in your own outfit.
We also overviewed the analysis process for large datasets, which includes investigative modeling. Of
course, the approach of modeling will depend on the nature of the data, but the analysis process is
universal for all projects using pivot tables:

1. Making more intelligible views of large data sets through aggregation into pivottables
2. Using modeling to investigate how the data trends and postulate why it trends with several
views of the data
3. Creating new perspectives of viewing the data informed by trends and educated ascertations
Finally, we discussed best practices for reporting data and Excel features that assist with implementing
these best practices. Many wizards and prompts in Excel have best practices built in, such as labeling and
improved text handling using in Office 365 Excel 2019. Throughout the text, we have shared
notes about Excel feature compatibility and workarounds for presenting Excel files in dated perpetual
outfits. In general, data and reports can be viewed in Excel for the web. A desktop build of Excel is
required to edit pivottables and reports.
Beyond specific “Power User skills,” the most important aspect to take away from this text is the Power
User mindset: how to use a feature to achieve some specific goal. Remember that there is a difference
between features and how to use them, and the functionality of a feature. Excel and its pivottables are
merely a tool for extracting potentially decision informing insights from large datasets.
People tend to overlook the creative aspects of data analysis, since “creativity” is usually associated with
some abstract, boundless activity reserved for people in the artistic field. Even artists have to practice
techniques to properly render and represent ideas that inform culture. It takes a similar methodical
approach to be truly successful and insightful in research settings as well. Your presentations must
answer why this dataset matters and how it will impact your client’s bottom line.
Most importantly, data analysts must have integrity. We discussed scientific integrity, and models that
follow the basic principles in data modeling are considered to be scientifically sound. Those that do not
follow the principles can be due to human error, which is why Microsoft has wizards that mitigate this
risk. However, individuals who make a deliberate choice to modify their models to support their beliefs
lack professional integrity. There may be times when peers or even your superiors will ask for models that
affirm their efforts in sales, outreach, or other items. It is always best to be truthful and provide an
accurate reflection of the data to maintain not only your integrity, but the integrity of the data analysis
field.
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