Converting an existing file with tons of regular pivot tables into a power pivot file

[emarold]

I currently have a dashboard that contains a data table with connections to a SharePoint List. I have tons of regular pivot tables and associated Pivot charts controlled by slicers in this file. It has grown to over 28 mgb in size. I have heard that with Power Pivot the actual data can reside outside of the file and thereby reduce the file size. Is there anyway to convert my existing file/pivot tables to the data model/power pivot format or, do I need to recreate everything?
I greatly appreciate any advice and guidance you can give me.

 

[Matt Allington]

Yes and no. The data CAN reside outside of the workbook, but only if it resides on a server somewhere, either a SharePoint Enterprise server that has a PowerPivot Gallery or a SSAS Tabular server. Otherwise you can load the data straight into a power Pivot data model embedded inside Excel - that could give you 5-10 x size compression depending on your data and the relative number of displayed data in your pivots vs the data model. If the reason your file is large is due to the tons of pivot tables, then power pivot won't help much. If the reason your file is large is because of the tons of data that sits behind your pivots, then there is hope.