Book Image

Data Modeling with Microsoft Excel

By : Bernard Obeng Boateng
5 (1)
Book Image

Data Modeling with Microsoft Excel

5 (1)
By: Bernard Obeng Boateng

Overview of this book

Microsoft Excel's BI solutions have evolved, offering users more flexibility and control over analyzing data directly in Excel. Features like PivotTables, Data Model, Power Query, and Power Pivot empower Excel users to efficiently get, transform, model, aggregate, and visualize data. Data Modeling with Microsoft Excel offers a practical way to demystify the use and application of these tools using real-world examples and simple illustrations. This book will introduce you to the world of data modeling in Excel, as well as definitions and best practices in data structuring for both normalized and denormalized data. The next set of chapters will take you through the useful features of Data Model and Power Pivot, helping you get to grips with the types of schemas (snowflake and star) and create relationships within multiple tables. You’ll also understand how to create powerful and flexible measures using DAX and Cube functions. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to apply the acquired knowledge in real-world scenarios and build an interactive dashboard that will help you make important decisions.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
1
Part 1: Overview and Introduction to Data Modeling in Microsoft Excel
6
Part 2: Creating Insightful Calculations from your Data Model using DAX and Cube Functions
9
Part 3: Putting it all together with a Dashboard

Adding columns to your data model

Before we start any activity, let us switch to the Design tab in the Power Pivot window. Here, we have some icons that can help us add new columns to our existing data. We can add a new column by selecting the Add icon under the Design menu, which will highlight the last column in our data, or by selecting this column directly.

Figure 4. 9 – Adding a new column in Power Pivot

Figure 4. 9 – Adding a new column in Power Pivot

Let’s try an example of adding a new column to the customer data. We want to calculate the age for each customer as a new column.

To do this, you can go to the Customer tab:

1. Select the last column, which will have Add Column as the header.

2. Type the name of the new column into the formula bar.

3. After selecting the column in the formula bar, begin the formula with the name of the column followed by a colon (:) and an equals sign (=).

Figure 4. 10 – Creating a formula for your calculated column

Figure 4. 10 – Creating a formula for your calculated...