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Its been a while since i wrote an Excel only post – apologies for that. This one is all about Excel. Seeing as we are now less than 2 months away from Excel 2010 there’s a heavy focus on that. I am now using the beta on my production  development machines though still using Excel 2003 in our virtual machine development environments. Some of our clients change slower than a glacier but we need to be able to support them.

Scatter charts with PowerPivot. Converting Pivot tables to cube formulas in order to access chart types not supported by Pivot tables. Sam has linked to Robs original post.

I have often used spin controls on spreadsheets to allow users to quickly and easily change inputs that affect charts or spreadsheet results. Cell Matrix has a good set of instructions on How to add an ActiveX SpinButton control to a spreadsheet in Excel 2007.

We are excited to announce a prize giveaway promotion, thanks to the folks over at Ignite Social Media.

Ok the quiz is open to everybody, but unfortunately the prize can only be won by someone who is a US resident.

The Prizes

The prize we will ship is a total value of over $250, and will include a Dell ST2310 23 inch flat panel monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

The Competition

Head to www.exceleratorsquiz.com and take the quiz. You will get a ranking, For example I was a Power User. You can post that on Twitter and Facebook also.

How to win

Post your ranking in the comments below along with your name, City and US post code. Add any other comment you like about Excel 2010 or PowerPivot. Be creative because I  will select a winner based on the comment you write.

Have fun!

Disclaimer. Although I was asked to review this product and received the Black and Decker VPX tools for doing so, I was not influenced by PowerPivot or Ignite Social Media in any way. The following review is entirely my own and not influenced or edited by Power Pivot in anyway.

What is Power Pivot?

First of all, PowerPivot is only available to work with Office 2010, and specifically Excel 2010 and SharePoint 2010. I have the Beta Office 2010 suite running on a test machine and a test user account so as to not interfere with my production environment.

In their own words:

PowerPivot for Excel is a data analysis tool that delivers unmatched computational power directly within the application users already know and love—Microsoft Excel. It’s the user-friendly way to perform data analysis using familiar Excel features you already know, such as the Office Fluent user interface, PivotTable and, PivotChart views, and slicers. It’s the fast way to generate rich and interactive analysis tools, easily mistaken for IT solutions after weeks of effort. It’s the right way to achieve deeper business insight and shorter decision cycles.

Specific features:

• Take advantage of familiar Excel tools and features
• Process massive amounts of data in seconds
• Load even the largest data sets from virtually any source
• Use powerful new analytical capabilities, such as Data Analysis Expressions (DAX)
• Make the most of multi-core processors and gigabytes of memory

The following set of screenshots takes you through the installation, data connection and using the tool.

There has been so much Excel and Office related info come over my desk the last couple of weeks I don't have time to do it all justice, but I will try and share it with you in an organised way as possible.

Office 2007 and earlier

Create conditional drop-down lists. In Excel 2007 (and earlier), it’s possible to create a drop-down list. By using the INDIRECT function, you can then create additional drop-down lists that are conditional to the first drop-down list.

From J-Walk, run some code that runs 1 million random numbers and see how fast your computer is compared with others.

I am proud to be affiliated with Charley Kyd’s Excel User Dashboard products (see the little graphic on the left hand side). I can heartily recommend his excellent products.

Charley is having a HALF OFF sale as well as some other amazing benefits. Here are the details:

Until midnight this Friday, you can get my best dashboard products for HALF OFF.

Here’s where you can grab your copies for half off.

I’m holding this special sale as a way to say THANK YOU to my customers and people who read my Excel For Business newsletter.

Here’s where you can grab your copy and save 50%.

Try My Dashboards for 50% And Get Six Free Bonuses.

If the 50% discount isn’t enough to have you heading to my half-off catalog page, these SIX free gifts will surely do the trick.

•  Bonus 1: One-Hour Live Webinar about IncSight QnE
This live webinar will show you how to set up and use IncSight QnE, and how to adapt its templates to meet your specific needs. I'll show you how to add or subtract periods, change periods to any that you want, add calculations, change chart sizes, change color schemes, and a lot more.