Pivot Table Data Crunching

[blubblub]

After being the lucky winner of the last challenge I got a lot of the books (thanks for that ). Only recently I actually sat down to read one of them. My choice was to start with the Pivot Table Data Crunching. I knew about the basics of Pivot tables but was never really excited about them, so thought this might be nice to start with.

Anyways, here's my opinion on the book.
I liked the business case and examples very much and also everything was quite well explained. I do have some suggestions:

Suggestion 1: Following the examples
As I normally like learning by doing I tried following the examples in the book. This was however quite unclear. It was unclear when I could or had to do something and often I could not find the matching data file or found one but it appears it has different values. Also perhaps some more exercises could help to practice.

Suggestion 2: Structure
Some chapters cannot be practiced unless you work in a company and have certain privelages. I would suggest to move those chapters to the end.

These are just some small details, overall the book has helped me in understanding and using PivotTables a lot.

p.s. not quite sure if this is the correct thread to post this 'review' or if it's even appreciated.....

 

[MrExcel]

I am interested in the places where your company priveleges would not let you try certain items. Can you drop me an e-mail (bill at mrexcel.com) and give me some details on that?

I am always surprised what some companies do with the group policy that affects Office.

 

[blubblub]

I actually meant you have to be in a company. It's the chapter concerning Sharepoint if I'm not mistaken and sharing your file with others.

I will go over the same chapters again here at my work, to see if I can do them.

 

[fred333]

Can't you use foldershare now?

 

[mgar]

Hi,

In Chapter 2 of the book, it instructs you to go to http://www.MrExcel.com/pivotbookdata.html to downloaded the file ptdc1.zip and extract the file Chapters 1-4 Sample Data.xls.

I downloaded the zip file and extracted the xls file. When I opened the file, it does not seem to display the data source. Instead it gives a pivot table that seems to already be complete. I want to do the exercise in Chapter 2 but it seems that this is the incorrect source file. I thought it was supposed to be the data source for Figure 2.6 in the book.

Please advise,
mgar

 

[mgar]

Re: Pivot Table Data Crunching (pls disregard previous post)

Please disregard my previous post. I did not scroll far enough to the left to see the entire spreadsheet. I'm all set now. How embarrassing.

mgar

Hi,

In Chapter 2 of the book, it instructs you to go to http://www.MrExcel.com/pivotbookdata.html to downloaded the file ptdc1.zip and extract the file Chapters 1-4 Sample Data.xls.

I downloaded the zip file and extracted the xls file. When I opened the file, it does not seem to display the data source. Instead it gives a pivot table that seems to already be complete. I want to do the exercise in Chapter 2 but it seems that this is the incorrect source file. I thought it was supposed to be the data source for Figure 2.6 in the book.

Please advise,
mgar