Microsoft PowerPivot is a free add-on to Excel from Microsoft that allows users to produce new kinds of reports and analyses that were simply impossible before. Written by the world's foremost PowerPivot blogger and practitioner, this guide is the first to tackle DAX formulas, the core capability of PowerPivot, from the perspective of the Excel audience in a simple, step-by-step manner tailored to its learning style. The techniques presented allow individuals to produce, in hours or even minutes, results that formerly would have taken entire teams weeks or months to produce and include lessons on the difference between calculated columns and measures, how formulas can be reused across reports of completely different shapes, how to merge disjointed sets of data into unified reports, how to make certain columns in a pivot behave as if the pivot were filtered while other columns do not, and how to create time-intelligent calculations in pivot tables such as "Year over Year" and "Moving Averages" whether they use a standard, fiscal, or a complete custom calendar. The "pattern-like" techniques and best practices contained in this book have been developed and refined over two years of onsite training with Excel users around the world, and now those key lessons-usually available in seminars costing thousands of dollars per day-are available to readers within the pages of this easy-to-follow manual.
