URGENT: Copy and Paste duplicate linked table to model

[vij490]

hi,

how can I Copy and Paste duplicate table to model, in linked mode?
Right now I can paste, but it is not linked, the first version is linked, though to the table and model.

Thanks!

 

[theBardd]

What problem are you trying to address, why do you need a duplicate table?

 

[vij490]

trying to enable the below solution to the said problem - i got it all working, except that my duplicate table is not linked!
all tables reside in the same file.
Solving

 

[theBardd]

No, that is what you are trying to do, not why. What is the business problem that you think needs to be solved this way?

 

[vij490]

No, that is what you are trying to do, not why. What is the business problem that you think needs to be solved this way?

I am in the exact same situation as shown in that link / example and trying to solve the same problem.

I have 2 tables that link up each other and also need to link individually to a third - in this case of the 3 links, only 2 can be active at a time.
A<->B
A<->C
B<->C
So, the work around like shown in that example is to have a duplicate of one of the tables.
Create duplicate of B, called B^
A<->B^
A<->C
B<->C

 

[vij490]

I am in the exact same situation as shown in that link / example and trying to solve the same problem.

I have 2 tables that link up each other and also need to link individually to a third - in this case of the 3 links, only 2 can be active at a time.
A<->B
A<->C
B<->C
So, the work around like shown in that example is to have a duplicate of one of the tables.
Create duplicate of B, called B^
A<->B^
A<->C
B<->C

"Business Need":
Table A - assigns projects to employee with unique project ID - and estimated hours
Table B - records actual hrs by various employees against the same unique project IDs over several days
Table C - Employee info

pivot required:
estimated and actual hrs by employee by project id; ofcourse i would add slicers of weeknum, team name, region, and all other as required.

 

[scottsen]

I'm with theBaard here -- it sounds like you are asking for technical details on how to do somethig... that probably wont help you.

Typically in your situation I would see an employee lookup table, a project lookup table, a budget data table and an actuals data table. I don't see where i would need to duplicate any tables.

 

[theBardd]

I go with Scott on the makep of the tables, 4 (plus any ancillary tables such as region and so on) would deliver all that you need, no need for a duplicate.

In particular,
- Don't have the employee on the project table, just keep that to pure project details
- On the tables that Scott calls Budget and Actuals, both would have the breakdown of project and employee ids, I would create a calculated column to concatenate them as ProjectEmployeeKey, and join the tables by those keys
- Add another calculated column on Actuals for the estimated amount, =RELATED( Budget[Estimate] ) - you could probably manage this with measures but calculated columns are fair in this instance in my view
- create a pivot with project name from Project, employee name from Employee, and Estimate and Actuals from Actuals

As long as the ancillary tables have a relationship in your model, you can add slicers by attributes from those tables.

I assume the actuals will be date-stamped, so best to have a proper calendar table to do any time based reporting.

 

[vij490]

OK, I agree with both of you and that's the staright forward way to do it!
The only thing that prevented me from doing that is if I were to take the joiner tables approach, it would mean additional data entry(like in multiple sheets or tables which can turn off my users) OR a macro to create the joining table. I want neither.
I might end up with that solution eventually, just seeing if anything else would work.

Back to my original Q - how to add a table to a data model by copy/paste and make it a linked one?