PowerPivot for the Data Analyst: Microsoft Excel 2010 (MrExcel Library)

The good:* Excellent information on new features and capabilities of PowerPivot tables. Lots of good examples.* Good compare & contrast with base PivotTables.* Good documentation of some of the v1 PowerPivot limitations.* The prose is very easy to read.The gaps:* The book was written before the final product was delivered. It would be good to see some errata/revisions covering changes made in the mean time for early buyers.* Probably somewhat related to the above, the discussion of DAX is fairly limited. DAX is the real key feature that makes PowerPivot more powerful than base PivotTables. (The best reference source I've seen so far is the MS "Data Analysis Expressions in PowerPivot for Excel 2010" document.)* It would have been nice to explain some considerations when moving models from PivotTables to PowerPivot. For example, PivotTables by definition have to have everything in one giant table. PowerPivot models end up working better with separated lookup (dimension) tables in my experience so far.

Book seems interesting, Jelen is well recognized, but just doing the first example load according to instructions crashes PowerPivot/Excel.In the first example, load the demo.txt file, then switch to Excel, to open Storeinfo Excel file and copy and paste into PPvt. When this is done, however, the demo file disappears, and there is no explanation, only see the storeinfo file--do not see the two tabs, as mentioned, only one. When I load both files directly in PowerPivot, that is, not using copy & paste as instructed, I see the two tabs. Thus if I follow the instructions in the book, it crashes. There is no explanation, and I am confused as to where the data is saved, and how to view.Have not been able to get beyond the beginning of the book, so I cannot say more. I did his first example several times, thinking it was something wrong I did, and each time it crashes. I also re-installed PowerPivot several times, because one of the messages says there is a missing component.No explanation. Went online to find tips, so many people have problems with getting PowerPivot working. MS should fix the problems, and authors like Bill Jelen should make sure their book instructions work--seems that PowerPivot is a work-in-progress, both in terms of the software and the books by authors capitalizing on it.Disappointing; was very thrilled and eager to learn PowerPivot and apply it practically. Anyone have similar problems? Very time consuming to have to track it all down all the issues online each time.

Ther book is written in a logical and understandable way. I am a newbie to PowerPivot but this book takes a step by step building approach to learning while still offering a vibrant enough index to serve as a reference.So far I have this and four other books and am still searching for one that has business problems followed by various approaches to solve them. I'd still kill for a book that listed an index topic like; "Median - finding the median value that can be reported as a category median, sub-category median, and sub-sub-category median." Or, "Dates - Finding the average duration between multiple events for each unique subset of transactions." Etc.This book is still very good, and very much worth the money. I would buy it again if I didn't own it. I'll keep looking for the ultimate "solution" book.

While doing some research wanting to buy an Excel 2010 book as an update to some very old copies, this book came up on my searches, after reading its table of contents I ended up buying it out of curiosity. Long story short... this book helped me become a PowerPivot user while also improving our analytics work at the office.If you frequently use and/or work with Pivot Tables, you'll find PowerPivot to be very similar but significantly more powerful. It's an amazing business intelligence tool that anybody with Excel 2010 can have access to.This book is a very good place to start learning about PowerPivot. Also, a good companion to this book is Art Tennick's "Practical PowerPivot & DAX Formulas for Excel 2010".  Practical PowerPivot & DAX Formulas for Excel 2010 Both books highly recommended.

Very good book to start out with. Mr. Excel has a wealth of knowledge so if you are an excel guy looking to get his feet wet with power pivot - this IS the place to start.However - the data files supporting the exercises are badly referenced and many examples in the book don't have supporting data files. More exercises and better referencing would make this a 5/5.

I like what Bill has done in terms of covering PowerPivot - there is more to be written on the subject but he has given readers a good overview and a lot of insight into how the product works. Its a great starting point for newbies to the software add-in to take off from! Make this the first book you buy on the topic and you can't go wrong.

This book is an excellent start to what you need to kick off learning about the analysts aspects of Excel, A few topics you have to do a little additional research but its a good read and the associated youtube videos help with understanding a lot of the common topics. I wish they went into more complex topics for the youtube video.

Something that sets this book apart from others is that Bill's excitement over Power Pivots is catchy. I literally noticed my jaw drops and my pupils dilate when reading this book. Is full of great tips and tricks. I love Pivot Tables (a former boss used to tell me: "I need this report. Wave your magic pivot wand.") and Bill is answering my questions as they come up. He starts with what PowerPivots are, and just as I was beginning to think about dropping regular Pivots, he explains why some times one is better than the other. I am one third into the book, and it is great.

The latest version of Powerpivot (in Excel 2016) appears to be a lot different from the one described in this book (as Microsoft have made many changes in the 8 years since 2010 to Powerpivot, adding and removing many icons and adding more functionality, functions etc), so you should check before buying this book. I think a lot of the early part of the book about installing Powerpivot is out of date. I think you are likely to become very lost and confused (like me) trying to learn the latest version of Powerpivot from this old book (like trying to navigate a city with many totally new streets using outdated maps). Better to buy a more up to date one. Also, there are things in this book which are poorly explained in my opinion.The book is now only useful if you already know the latest Powerpivot, and you refer to the parts of the book where there have been no major changes to Powerpivot.

I would normally recommend Bill Jelen's books without hesitation (I do have many of them) but I was very disappointed with this book (PowerPivot for the Data Analyst).Sample files are available but the book does not seem to mention the name of file(s) needed for a particular topic, although you can more-or-less match them to the chapter. However, some of the tables shown in the book have data that does not appear to be in any of the sample files so it would be necessary for you to create them yourself. I like to follow-along with the examples to get a good understanding of the subject but I have not been able to get past Page 2 of Chapter 5 - yes, I could create the three small tables but I then have to wonder how many more later in the book would also need to be created.I therefore bought another book on the subject of PowerPivot/DAX formulas and that uses the Microsoft Northwind data - I have almost finished working through all the examples.It seems that the MrExcel book was rushed to Press before being up to the usual MrExcel standard. If you intend only to read the book, it will probably be considered very good - if you want to try the examples yourself, you may be a bit frustrated by having to create some of the data yourself.

Found this version to be the terrific for introduction to PP. Although it has various misprints and errors throughout the book, there are no problems following the logic. Especially the parts on DAX and hints/tips are great. Highly recommended.If big data is your game, buy this book. If not, stick to regular pivots.

I have received the text today.It was well packaged and arrived in good condition.I started reading it and the material is very well written.I am very satisfied all in all.THANK YOU.Robert

Dieses Buch ist wirklich der beste Ausgangspunkt um PowerPivot zu erlernen. Bill Jelen schreibt sehr strukturiert und noch dazu - man glaubt es kaum - extrem unterhaltsam und witzig! Wie schon Bewertungen auf Englisch schreiben - es ist nicht für die extremen Geeks (SQL, BI - Erfahrenen), sondern für den Einsteiger.