Excel Pivot Table Tutorial - Step By Step Guide of How to Create Pivot Tables in Excel.

OLAP Cube in Excel and Pivot Table From External Data. OLAP Cubes provide a convenient way to crunch data in Excel. Imagine a Pivot Table pulling information from thousands or millions of data points with hundreds of columns and you being able to share this humongous data set with colleagues using an Excel spreadsheet that weights nothing more than a few Kilobytes. Add to this the ability to update the source data while the users get to look at that information real time. That’s what a Pivot Table based on an OLAP cube can do for you.

Edit Article wiki How to Change an Excel Pivot Table Source. Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet application is designed to allow users to organize and interpret their data. Creating KPI Dashboards in Microsoft Excel is a series of 6 posts by Robert. This 6 Part Tutorial on KPI Dashboards Teaches YOU: Creating a Scrollable List View. About this Entry. Excel users: Try my spreadsheet for keeping baseball stats was posted on May 28th, 2014 at 6.35pm and is filed under Resources. This entry has 30.

A disclaimer : You will not be able to create an OLAP cube in Excel 2. To create an OLAP cube you will have to rely on good ol’ Excel 2. Excel 2. 00. 7 with an OLAP cube as the source. What is an OLAP Cube? Wiki defines an OLAP cube (Online Analytical Processing) as “a data structure that allows fast analysis of data. It can also be defined as the capability of manipulating and analyzing data from multiple perspectives”.

Each dimension of an OLAP cube would define one data category. Obviously, the cube is misnomer – an OLAP cube can have more than three dimensions. OLAP Cubes in Excel. Excel provides a set of drivers that can be used to connect to a whole host of data sources and create your own olap cubes. Once the cube has fed itself with the data points that it needs, it can act as a standalone data source. The data residing in the OLAP cube can then be presented in an Excel spreadsheet using a pivot table.

In that sense, the OLAP cube acts as the data source for the pivot table (normal pivot tables will typically have their source data residing in an excel spreadsheet). The cube processes all the requests for slicing & dicing of the data sent by the pivot table. Whenever a fresh copy of the data is requested by the pivot table, the OLAP cube fetches the latest information from the data source, refreshes itself and then continues to service all the requests. How To Download Itouch Apps Cracked For Android more. An important point to note here is that the pivot table’s size is reduced to a fraction of what a normal pivot table would have been. For all its data processing abilities, the pivot table relies upon the OLAP cube.

The physical separation of the Pivot Table from the source data, achieved via an OLAP cube, allows the source data to be placed anywhere in the network and be updated real- time independent of the pivot table. If the network connection is fast enough, the user will never know the difference but will surely appreciate the compactness. How to create an OLAP cube in Excel. Let’s first begin by looking at the source data. One major advantage that an OLAP cube provides the data miner is that it can pack a lot more data than an ordinary excel spreadsheet would. The other advantage is that you can use a variety of data sources including txt, csv , asc and others.

So let’s start with a comma separated file with the following data points – product, region, date and sales. Create a new directory and place the file with the raw data in it. In our case, the file is named source.

Click on “Data” from the menu and then select “Import External Data” followed by “New Database Query”. Select a new data source.

Press Ok. Provide a name to the data source and select the type of driver that you want to use for the purpose. In our case, since we are using a . Microsoft Text Driver. Press Ok. Uncheck the “Use Current Directory” checkbox and select the directory where the raw data file has been placed. Three clicks on the Ok button bring you back and opens up the Query Wizard.

The left hand box has a list of the data sources in the directory that we selected in the previous step. You can use more than one data source at a time, though in our case, we will be sticking to just one. Move all the items (or the ones that you like) to the box on the right and press next. You can provide filtering and sorting options in the next two forms but we will just give them a miss for now and simply click “Next” which brings us to the final screen. Here’s where the difference between Excel 2. Excel 2. 00. 7 lie in terms of creating OLAP cubes. While in Excel 2.

Excel 2. 00. 7 you only be presented with two options with the option to “Create an OLAP cube from this query” having been taken away. Fortunately for us, we still have access to Excel 2. OLAP cube. On pressing Ok, the OLAP Cube wizard opens up. Press ok and move onto the next step where we specify the field that we would like to summarize. Think of this as the data field in a pivot table. In our case, it is sales since we would like to analyze sales across product, regions and date ranges.

Press “Next”. Specify the fields that we would like to use to make the OLAP cube. Choose only the ones that you are sure that you would like to use – choosing everything, especially if you have a large number of fields, can slow down the cube’s response time.

Press Next where we provide the location where we can store the cube. Press Ok and the application will provide a new form asking for the path where to store the OLAP query . The moment you press ok, the OLAP cube creation process begins and may take a few seconds.

This is the points where Excel pack the cube with information from the raw data file. The moment the process is complete, the application would open up the familiar Pivot Table Creation Wizard form. At this point, if the sole purpose was to make an OLAP cube, we can cancel (press esc key).

If you would like to proceed, you can use specify the pivot table layout and save the file. In our case, since we wanted Excel to create the cube for us, we click Cancel. Let’s move over to Excel 2. Pivot Table. If we go back to the specified directory, we will see a new file with a .

Excel. That’s the cube ! Best Document Scanning Software For Quickbooks. How to use an OLAP Cube in Excel to make a Pivot Table. Open up an Excel spreadsheet and click on the Pivot Table tab from the ribbon. Choose to “Use an external data source” and then use the “Browse for more” button to locate the . The form picks up the OLAP cube as the data source and shows the connection name. Press ok and viola !

We are presented with a Pivot Table that’s based out of the OLAP Cube. Save the worksheet. Now comes the good part. Just go back and look at the size of the file – in our case, we packed more than 6.

KB !!! The OLAP cube has stored all the for use by the Pivot Table reducing its footprint to a fraction of a conventional Pivot Table. You can practically do every thing that you do with a normal pivot table here – move fields around, sort, slice just as you would a normal pivot table. Another interesting thing – whenever you refresh the pivot table, the OLAP cube communicates with the raw data file and uploads fresh information but otherwise acts pretty much independent unit.

So what’s in it for the Data Miner. Reduced file size. You can pack a million rows in to an OLAP cube, create a pivot table out of it and have it sent to users without sweating about the file size, moving emails to offline folders or the ugly “you have used more than your authorized limit” taunts from the server 2.

You can update the raw data file independent of the workbook that you may have already dispatched to users. So no worrying about having to send a fresh copy every time fresh data arrives. A single refresh of the pivot table will cause it to communicate to the OLAP cube and update itself with the newest data points. Till the time the path is accessible to the workbook, your job is done.)3. Showcase your skill, sit back and smile.