Power pivot general questions

[FIN_ANALYST79]

Good morning everyone,
I wanted to thank everyone in advance for all the future help. I have been using powerpivot for approximately a month and have come to a stopping point. I am a basic SQL end user and understand its language which some seems to carry over to powerpivot. With that said, I have several questions that would help me get past my sticking point:

1. what are the MINIMUM computer requirements to run excel powerpivot? ( my computer has a intel 2.0ghz processor, 4gb ram, 64 bit operating system, yet it has a tough time regreshing the data on powerpivot when I make changes to tables).
2. I understand powerpivot works sort of like vlookup, but I still can't figure out how to bring over non- numeric information over from different tables? for example, what if I have a column with unique names and I am interested in bring their last names from a different table by using power pivot? which formula do I use?
3. is it possible to concatenate on powerpivot? for example, I want to bring over 2 columns combined such as first name and last name columns from a table and populate these on a single column?


thank you so much!

 

[scottsen]

1. You don't mention if you have 32 vs 64 bit Excel (64 is preferrable). But in general, your machine is fine unless you are using large data sets. It runs great on my weak laptop.
2. You don't exactly use a "formula". You create a relationship betweent the tables and it magically "just works"
3. Yep. You can easily create a "calculated column" in power pivot with = [Field1] & [Field2]