Powerful Pivottables for Excel Dashboards

By Gary Stewart

Excel dashboards are a great visual way to report performance results or any other kind of data. The main problem occurs when there is a need to regularly update data. The aim here is to automate as much as possible. This is were pivots have the greatest use in excel.

If the data model is setup properly at the start, then the process of updating and adding new information should be a breeze. Use some VBA or macro recorder to help achieve this. You can then link this to a button and be able to update all your tables at the click of a button.

Pivot tables provide an excellent way to dynamically update dashboard charts and tables when new data appears. They should be your starting point for a data model. New information is added to the source list for the table. These are then hidden in staging worksheets. Through the use of excel functions, links and VBA we can update them when new data is added, which will subsequently show in the reports.

By dividing your data and analysis processes, the updating of new data within the pivots should subsequently appear on all dashboards. This is done by linking your pivot data to other cells rather than direct linking from tables to dashboard component.

This dynamic linking to dashboard charts and tables can be done using specific formulas in excel. Some of these are unheard of and not used very often.

This means if i were to change the layout of the pivot, the cells would still show the value of quarters 1,2,3 and 4, but if i did not use the getpivotdata function, then i would only get the value of the cell - which is now likely to be something different now after the pivottable has been pivotted. It is simple to use. Select the cell and type in the = sign. Then point to the value in the pivottable you want the cell to link to. TIP: If this doesn't work then click on the generate get pivotdata icon to switch the formula back on. - 32198

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