Comments on: Comparing Tables with a PivotTable

By: Loren

Loren — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:41:57 +0000

Uhmm… Pivots are one way to do this and yes, a database is another, but there are about a dozed cheap (or free) comparison tools on the market that do a heap more than simply compare 2 tables. I know that these are outside the Excel framework, but any reason why these are being considered?

By: Jeff Weir

Jeff Weir — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:35:20 +0000

Hey Mike…do you have any luck getting SQL queries with temp tables to run within an Excel data connection?

I’ve got one horrendously complicated query that makes major use of temp tables, and it runs okay. But I can’t get any other queries with temp tables to work. Even something as simple as:

SELECT membership_id
into #temp
FROM MEMBERSHIP

select membership_id
from #temp

drop table #temp

This thows me an error “the query could not run, or the database table could not be opened.”

I’ve tried heaps of variations, and they all work within SQL Query Analyzer, but not directly in Excel. Yet the complicated query I mention above works fine. I even tried overwriting the complicated query with the simple query above to see if it was the connection string or sometthing, but still had no luck.

Any ideas on this?

Cheers
Jeff

By: Jeff Weir

Jeff Weir — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 22:12:44 +0000

Using the count in a pivot table is a really nice visual way to see where the records are.

One good reason for doing this at the database end is that if the records in the database change, your report will be up to date with a simple refresh. Whereas a table that comes from a double-clicked pivot field is static.

By: Ross

Ross — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:09:47 +0000

surely consolidate, count?

By: datapig

datapig — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:11:17 +0000

JP: I don’t have a page on it, but I can definately cover this in another post.