Microsoft PowerPivot for Excel 2010 – Introduction

In this blog, I am going to briefly discuss what PowerPivot can do.

After you installed PowerPivot, PowerPivot appears on the Excel 2010 ribbon:

After you click on the PowerPivot Window Launch button, you would see a new window come up.

Importing Data

You may have data in many different places, e.g. database, Excel, reports, or even internet.  Microsoft PowerPivot offers 5 different ways to get external data:

• Database
• Reports
• Data Feeds
• Text Files
• Other Sources

After the import, each table shows up as a tab in the PowerPivot client window.

Managing Relationships

After data is imported, the next step is to define the relationships among tables. You can create relationships and give it a meaningful name.

After you click the Create Relationship button, you can specify the relationship  in the Create Relationship dialogue.

And you can manage existing relationships.

Presenting Information

Once your data is ready and relationships have been properly established, then you can create pivot table to do analysis or pivot chart to present information; an environment that you are very familiar.  PowerPivot enhances the Excel experience by providing quick templates for frequently used layouts:

However, since your data is stored in PowerPivot, you must start the PivotTable within the PowerPivot, and PowerPivot overrides the default PivotTable Field List by providing its own Task Pane:

Pivot Table

You probably can’t tell if the following pivot table is from Excel or PowerPivot.

Pivot Chart

Slicer is a new feature for Excel 2010 and you can use it with PowerPivot as well.

 

Hold on here!  I can use Pivot Table / Pivot Chart / Slicer in Excel without installing PowerPivot.  Why do I need PowerPivot at all? Why waste all my effort to import data and establish relationships?  I have better thing to do!  Good questions!  And I am going to answer your questions and explain the real benefits of PowerPivot in my next blog.

 

• Microsoft PowerPivot for Excel 2010 – Data Analysis Expressions (DAX)
• Microsoft PowerPivot for Excel 2010 – Adding Slicer
• Microsoft PowerPivot for Excel 2010 – Adding Pivot Chart
• Microsoft PowerPivot for Excel 2010 – Adding Pivot Table
• Microsoft PowerPivot for Excel 2010 – Creating Relationships Among Data
• Microsoft PowerPivot for Excel 2010 – Importing Data
• Why Microsoft PowerPivot?
• Microsoft PowerPivot for Excel 2010 – Introduction
• Excel 2010 – PowerPivot

Andrew Chan is the owner and founder of ALG Inc.

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