One of my more common consults is for “my workbook is slow”. Occasionally, I will have to dig into the actual measures, but more typically, I just check for a few common issues that can have a large negative impact on performance. Before we dig into those, let’s just take one moment to state the obvious. Power Pivot is an in-memory database. Almost by definition… if you want things to run faster… use less memory! When I am looking at the customers model, the overriding question I am asking Continue Reading
My Wish List for Excel 2015
This certainly isn’t a list of suggestions for Microsoft because it is much too late for that. Microsoft is likely all done coding and now we just wait for them to polish up. But hey, a man can have wishes, and here are mine. I have put them in order of how much I care… Power Pivot For All Office 2013 was a complete fiasco for Power Pivot. Originally it was only available via volume licensing before public outcry allowed folks to buy the standalone version of Excel to get the Power Pivot Continue Reading
The Real Experience, Episode 1
I had a crazy idea to record myself grabbing real data… doing whatever massage is necessary on the data… and then developing a power pivot model. Live! It would be a “Real Experience”, not a canned demo that we know works. Even when demonstrating a concept, like the values function I wrote about on the Power Pivot Pro blog… you end up with a skewed view of the world. I have to admit, it went… somewhat worse than I expected Take a look: Part 1: http://tr.im/1pDVq Part 2: Continue Reading