Using slicer on several data sources (power query) with non-unique values?

[hansi262]

Hello,


maybe somebody could help me. I would like to have several slicer on several data sources (power query) where the data sources do not have unique values?

Example:
2 data sources in power query
query a: list of production orders
query b: list of sales orders
both have the columns plant name, the customer name and the date in common.
I generated 2 pivots, one for production orders, one for sales orders

Now I would like to have a slicer, filtering both pivots automatically for the plant and for the date. Both data sources have 1000 lines, with several sales and production orders per plant and per date.

There are some tutorials on the net, to use the "relationship" button (Excel 2016), which does not work, as in both data set, the column plant is not unique.

My current workaround is, to have a master data table with one row per plant in power query and a hidden pivot, called plant, that just lists all plant names. I use that one to make 2 relationships with both queries, production and sales orders and then make a slicer on the plant pivot. It seems to work, but sounds a bit cumbersome. Is there a better way, to directly us a slicer on 2 data sources with multiple entries or do I really need to include this artificial step? see screenshot.

thanks for advice,
Michael

 

[pjmorris]

my sense is that you're confusing the behaviour of a Slicer with that of linked tables. Linked tables cannot directly handle many-to-many relationships. To do so create a table of the unique values, then link each table to that unique table - you'll have a many to one relationship on each side. Then create a measure that simply names the other table, so to sum values in the sales table based on a field in the Production table: Calculate(SUM(qrySales[Values]), qryProduction). I don't really know how it works, but its worked for me.

To allow a single slicer to operate on both tables, simply right click the slicer and select the 'connections' option (I think that's right - it sits somewhere in middle of the context menu) and you can then click on the tables that the Slicer operates on.

HTH