Solutions for Data Science

Power Query cleans and transforms data You add your data sources (Excel tables, CSV files, database tables, webpages, etc.) Press buttons in the Power Query Editor window to transform your data. Output that data to your worksheet or data model (PowerPivot) that is ready for pivot tables or reporting. Power Query is like a machine because once you have your query setup, the process can be repeated with the click of a button (refresh) every time your data changes. If you have used macros to transform your data, you can think of this as  a much easier alternative to VBA that does NOT require coding . Common Data Tasks Made Easy Do you work with data that has been exported from a system of record?  This could be a general ledger, accounting, ERP, CRM, Salesforce.com, or any reporting system that contains data. If so, you probably spend a lot of time transforming or re-shaping your data to create additional reports, pivot tables, or charts. These data transformations could include ...

  When you want all your slides to contain the same fonts and images (such as logos), you can make those changes in one place—the Slide Master, and they'll be applied to all your slides. To open Slide Master view, on the   View   tab, select   Slide Master : The master slide is the top slide in the thumbnail pane on the left side of the window. The related layout masters appear just below the slide master (as in this picture from PowerPoint for macOS): 1  Slide master 2  Layout masters When you edit the slide master, all slides that are based on that master will contain those changes. However, the majority of changes that you make will most likely be to the layout masters related to the master. When you make changes to layout masters and the slide master in Slide Master view, other people working in your presentation (in Normal view) can’t accidentally delete or edit what you’ve done. Conversely, if you're working in Normal view and find that you'...

There are two  consolidation tools in Excel.  You have three data sets. Each has names down the left side and months across the top. Notice that the names are different, and each data set has a different number of months. Data set 2 has five months instead of 3 across the top. Some people are missing and others are added. Data set 3 has four months across the top and a few new names. The Consolidate command will join data from all three worksheets in to one worksheet. You want to combine these into a single data set. The first tool is the Consolidate command on the Data tab. Choose a blank section of the workbook before starting the command. Use the RefEdit button to point to each of your data sets and then click Add. In the lower left, choose Top Row and Left Column. In the above figure, notice three annoyances: Cell A1 is always left blank, the data in A is not sorted, and if a person was missing from a data set, then cells are left empty instead of being filled with 0. Fill...

Instead of creating a formula outside of the pivot table, you can do this inside the pivot table. Start from the image with column D empty. Drag Revenue a second time to the Values area. Look in the Columns section of the Pivot Table Fields panel. You will see a tile called Values that appears below Date. Drag that tile so it is below the Date field. Your pivot table should look like this: Double-click the Sum of Revenue2 heading in D4 to display the Value Field Settings dialog. Click on the tab for Show Values As. Change the drop-down menu to % Difference From. Change the Base Field to Date. Change the Base Item to (Previous Item). Type a better name than Sum of Revenue2 - perhaps % Change. Click OK. You will have a mostly blank column D (because the pivot table can't calculate a percentage change for the first year. Right-click the D and choose Hide.

The pivot table below shows products across the top and customers down the side. The pivot table is sorted so the largest customers are at the top. The Sales Rep field is in the report filter. If you open the Rep dropdown, you can filter the data to any one sales rep. This is a great way to create a report for each sales rep. Each report summarizes the revenue from a particular salesperson‘s customers, with the biggest customers at the top. And you get to see the split between the various products. The Excel team has hidden a feature called Show Report Filter Pages. Select any pivot table that has a field in the report filter. Go to the Analyze tab (or the Options tab in Excel 2007/2010). On the far left side is the large Options button. Next to the large Options button is a tiny dropdown arrow. Click this dropdown and choose Show Report Filter Pages.... Excel asks which field you want to use. Select the one you want (in this case the only one available) and click OK. Over the next few...

There is a super-obscure way to add up/down markers to a pivot table to indicate an increase or a decrease. Somewhere outside the pivot table, add columns to show increases or decreases. In the figure below, the difference between I6 and H6 is 3, but you just want to record this as a positive change. Use  SIGN(I6-H6)  to get either +1, 0, or -1. Select the two-column range showing the sign of the change and then select Home, Conditional Formatting, Icon Sets, 3 Triangles. (I have no idea why Microsoft called this option 3 Triangles, when it is clearly 2 Triangles and a Dash, as shown below.) With the same range selected, now select Home, Conditional Formatting, Manage Rules, Edit Rule. Check the Show Icon Only checkbox. With the same range selected, press  Ctrl+C  to copy. Select the first Tuesday cell in the pivot table. From the Home tab, open the Paste dropdown and choose Linked Picture. Excel pastes a live picture of the icons above the table. At this point, adju...

  You have a workbook with 12 worksheets, 1 for each month. All of the worksheets have the same number of rows and columns. You want a summary worksheet in order to total January through December. To create it, use the formula  =SUM(January:December!B4) . Copy the formula to all cells and you will have a summary of the other 12 worksheets. Caution I make sure to never put spaces in my worksheet names. If you do use spaces, the formula would have to include apostrophes, like this:  =SUM('Jan 2018:Mar 2018'!B4) .

  In the figure below, say that you want to find any changes between column A and column D. Select the data in A2:A9 and then hold down the Ctrl key while you select the data in D2:D9. Select, Home, Find & Select, Go To Special. Then, in the Go To Special dialog, choose Row Differences. Click OK. Only the items in column A that do not match the items in column D are selected. Use a red font to mark these items, as shown below. Caution This technique works only for lists that are mostly identical. If you insert one new row near the top of the second list, causing all future rows to be offset by one row, each of those rows is marked as a row difference

  you have a data set with product, date, customer, and sales information. The IT department forgot to put sector in there. Here is a lookup table that maps customer to sector. Time for a VLOOKUP, right? There is no need to do VLOOKUPs to join these data sets if you have Excel 2013 or newer. These versions of Excel have incorporated the Power Pivot engine into the core Excel. (You could also do this by using the Power Pivot add-in for Excel 2010, but there are a few extra steps.) In both the original data set and the lookup table, use Home, Format as Table. On the Table Tools tab, rename the table from Table1 to something meaningful. I’ve used Data and Sectors. Select one cell in the data table. Choose Insert, Pivot Table. Starting in Excel 2013, there is an extra box, Add This Data to the Data Model, that you should select before clicking OK. The Pivot Table Fields list appears, with the fields from the Data table. Choose Revenue. Because you are using the Data Model, a new line a...