Favorite Power Pivot Resources

This post is just a list of what helped me grow my Power Pivot skills… well, other than trial by fire.    If I have missed any awesome resources, let me know in the comments!

Blogs

• powerpivotpro.com : Rob Collie.  One of my oldest friends, mentor and how I “got into” Power Pivot… and still… I get amazed by how much content is on his blog.  “Oh crap, how do I calculate compound interest… <web search> … oh, of course Rob has an entry for that”.  This is the Every Man’s Power Pivot.  Always approachable, usually funny.
• SQLBI.com : Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari.  The Italians.  Their blog (under “Articles” on their site) is awesome for geeks like me.  Much more likely to dive into some wicked performance detail… that I love.  But, do not miss their videos (under “TV”), I have learned stupid amount off them… and not just about how to add an “A” sound to the end of english words that don’t end in A.
• powerpivotblog.nl : Kasper de Jonge.  I wonder if the “de” should be capitalized.  Anyway, some great blog entries here, the most important to me was the vba scripts to determine how much memory Power Pivot is nom nom nom’ing. 
• cwebbbi.wordpress.com : Chris Webb.  Chris is the master of MDX and Power Query, which… are obviously not directly Power Pivot, but… well, first Power Query is pretty awesome.  I mean, you gotta get your data into Power Pivot in some way and if you need to unpivot, it is a life saver.  Plus, with 1 THOUSAND entries, ya… some of them are Power Pivot.
• excelguru.ca : Ken Puls.  Another “more power query than power pivot” but Chris and Ken both really turned me onto the, ahem, Power of Power Query.
• blog.gbrueckl.at : Gerhard Brueckl.  I totally need to meet Gerhard some time, because he is clearly “my people”.  His blog entries are fringe stuff… most recently is to expose your analysis server to http, via powershell… which is just sooooooo something I would do.

Books

• DAX Formulas for PowerPivot by Rob Collie.   imo, this is “the book”, and likely the only one you really need.  Like all of Rob’s work it really his that sweet spot of practical and approachable.
• Microsoft Excel 2013 Building Data Models with PowerPivot by Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari.  This is the “next step” if you have outgrown Rob’s book and want to really really understand some of the nitty gritty details.  It’s not always easy to read but the enlightenment once you get it… is fairly epic.

Forums

• Mr. Excel : this is where I “hang out” and is the most active forum I have found.  If you find others… let me know
• Matt’s Crazy Oz Forum : I don’t go here as frequently, but it does seem to be gaining in activity and Matt’s a good guy in there helping folks.

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About Scott Senkeresty

Scott Senkeresty here… Founder and Owner of Tiny Lizard. Yes, I have done some stuff: A Master’s Degree in Computer Science from California Polytechnic State University in beautiful San Luis Obispo, California. Over twelve years developing software for Microsoft, across Office, Windows and Anti-Malware teams… Read More >>

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Scott Senkeresty here… Founder and Owner of Tiny Lizard. Yes, I have done some stuff: A Master’s Degree in Computer Science from California Polytechnic State University in beautiful San Luis Obispo, California. Over twelve years developing software for Microsoft, across Office, Windows and Anti-Malware teams… Read More >>