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What I ended up with is this cool technique that allows me to replace my old Form Controls with Pivot Slicers. As I select each slicer, my dashboard responds as it would would if I were using a set of Form Controls. Keep in mind that the charts and other components in my dashboard are in no way connected to a pivot table.


 

In this post, I’ll walk you through the steps required to set this up. But, if you want to skip to the punch line, here is a sample download.

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Step 1:

Create a simple table that holds the names you’d like for your controls, along with some index numbering. Once you have that, create a pivot table from it.

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Step 2:

On the Insert tab of the Ribbon, you’ll see the Slicer command. Click anywhere on your pivot table then choose this Slider command. This will activate the Insert Slicers dialog box. Once activated, simply choose the field that holds the names you’d like for your controls.

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Step 3:

At this point, you will have a slicer. Now, you can right-click the slicer and choose Slicer Settings to activate the Slicer Settings dialog box. This dialog box provides for a handful of formatting options.

In this scenario, we would want to remove the word CHART and also remove that filter icon. To do so, we can uncheck the ‘Display Header’ option.

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At this point we have a clean looking slicer.

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So what now? Well, here is the thing. We now have a slicer that basically controls a simple pivot table. As I click on the word Expense, the pivot table will filter to show the index number for Expense.

Here is the interesting bit. The filtered index number will always show up in the same cell (B3 in this case). So this cell can now be used as a trigger cell for: vlookups, matches, offsets, etc.

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In the example I shown in this screenshot, I’m using the filtered trigger cell to control the values that are going into my dashboard staging area.

As I click my slicer on the front end, the formulas here in the back end will respond because the pivot table is getting re-filtered to change the trigger cell.

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The drawback to this technique, of course, is that it can only be used with Excel 2010.

So if your entire audience is using Excel 2010, this is definitely a nifty trick you can apply to your dashboards. If half your audience is still on Excel 2007 or 2003, then you’ll want to stay with your standard form controls.

Related posts:

1. Cut the Size of Your Pivot Table Workbooks in Half
2. Showing Multiple Pivot Table Subtotals for One Field
3. Forcing Number Formatting in a Pivot Table
4. Creating a Frequency Distribution with a Pivot Table
5. Transposing a Dataset with a PivotTable

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Anyway, for my first post back, I thought it would be fun to do a light Pivot Table trick.

Did you know you can show more than one subtotal for a particular field in a pivot table?

In this example, I’ve got some information on the sales of bar equipment. Although we do see the sum of all sales at the bottom, let’s say we’d like to see a few more descriptive statistics (like avg, min, and max).

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We could simply go to the field settings for the target field (Product Category in this case), then specify that we want a ‘Custom’ Subtotal.

At that point, we would be able to choose any of the subtotal functions we’d like to see.

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The resulting view gives us a bit more context around the sales transactions for Bar Equipment.

The average transaction is about $125, the biggest transaction was for $12,858, and the smallest transaction was for $4.

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There you have it. Now go forth and multiply your subtotals all over the place.

Related posts:

1. Creating a Frequency Distribution with a Pivot Table
2. Cut the Size of Your Pivot Table Workbooks in Half
3. Forcing Number Formatting in a Pivot Table
4. Renaming PivotTable Summary Field Titles
5. Break PivotTable Report Filters into Multiple Columns

Take a normal PivotTable with multiple Report Filters (In this example – Region, Product Description, Business Segment, Customer Name).

Right click anywhere inside the PivotTable and select PivotTable options.

In the Options dialog box, you’ll see a setting called ‘Report filter fields per column’.

Change this setting to specify the number of filter fields you’d like to have in each column. In this example, I’d like break up my Report filters so that only two are showing in each column.

Once implemented, the Report filters are broken out so that only two show up in each column.

This is a nice feature if you want your Report filters conform to the general shape of your PivotTable.

Here is a PivotTable where the Report filters are set to show only one per column.

Related posts:

1. Copying VLOOKUPs Across Multiple Columns
2. Add Rank to PivotTable
3. Renaming PivotTable Summary Field Titles
4. Comparing Tables with a PivotTable
5. AutoFilter a PivotTable

Most people don’t even try it, but customizing the Grand Total and other Summary titles give your PivotTables a little something extra.

All you have to do is simply type over the labels. Yep…it’s that easy.

See how much cooler the Summary rows look? Ahhh…it’s the little things in life.

Related posts:

1. Add Rank to PivotTable
2. Comparing Tables with a PivotTable
3. AutoFilter a PivotTable
4. Transposing a Dataset with a PivotTable
5. Exploding a Dataset using a PivotTable

“Any way to add a rank to a pivot table”?

DataPig Answers:

In Excel 2010, it’s really easy. In Excel 2007/2003, it’s a bit clunky.

Adding Rank in Excel 2003/2007

Step 1: Sort your pivot table on the data measure you are trying to rank.

Step 2: Add a Calculated Field that will have the formula =1.

This will essentially assign a value of 1 to each row.

Step 3: Right-click on your newly created calculated field and go into its Value Field Settings dialog box. There, you will select the “Show Values As” tab. Change the setting for “Show Data As” to be “Running Total In”. Because this field is used to rank the Markets, we change the Base Field to be Market.

The result will be a new data field that reports the relative rank of each Market.

Adding Rank in Excel 2010

Start with a pivot table similar to the one shown here.

Notice that the same data measure is shown twice – In this case, SumOfSalesAmount.

Right-click on the second instance of data measure and select Show Value As, then Rank Largest to Small Smallest.

Once your ranking is applied, you can adjust the labels and formatting. This will leave you with a clean looking ranking report.

Related posts:

1. Comparing Tables with a PivotTable
2. Exploding a Dataset using a PivotTable
3. Transposing a Dataset with a PivotTable
4. AutoFilter a PivotTable
5. Excel 2010 Week – PivotTable SubTotals