Aaron Hoffman's Blog

Want your data to really pop ? Check out my latest project: Sizzle drag-and-drop interactive data visualization Sorting a Calculated field (or Value field) in Excel 2013 Pivot Tables may not be very clear.  Unlike the Row fields there is no option button in the column header allowing you to easily sort the column, but it is possible. In the example below, I have a Pivot Table with "ListItemAbv" as the Row and "Count of ListItemAbv" as a calculated field (there is also a filter on "RankOrder", but that is not relevant to the example) Notice that, by default, the Pivot Table is sorted by "ListItemAbv."  There is also an option button visible in the header column (A:3).  You can use that option button to easily sort the Pivot Table by "ListItemAbv." However, there is no option button available to sort the Pivot Table by the Calculated field "Count of ListItemAbv".  To sort by that calculated field, select...

I find that if I’m working with data from a SQL query it is easier to manipulate, sort, and filter that data in Excel than it is in the SQL query itself.  I am also a fan of using Excel as a Data Visualization/Reporting tool.  Because of these two things I tend to work in Excel quite a bit and have developed a few macros to help make my life easier. Many times when you are working with data from a SQL query and you sort on a “dimension” column (example below) you will have many repeated values in a single column.  If you want to page through the data and find when the values changes from one to the next, Excel does not have the built in ability to do this.  However the Macro to perform this function is pretty easy to write. In the image below the data was sorted on the “Type” column.  If cell B3 is selected and the FindNextValueChangeInColumn macro is run, cell B7 would be selected.  If it is run a second time cell B12 would be selected and so on. ...