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Pivot Tables vs. Calculated Tables for Dashboards

Rico Mawcinitt

New Member
Hello CHANDOO Forum -

I would like to get thoughts on what is the best way to determine if you should use a pivot table or calculated table to create/enhance your dashboard. I work a lot in data modeling and what to know more about creating sustainable data sets as they relate to pivots and calc tables.

I use a lot of pivot tables/named ranges today and find myself limited to the slicers that I can create. What are the advantages to the filtering that you can create with a calc table?

Any insights would be greatly appreciated.

Best,
Rico
 
Rico

At a basic level there are no differences between the results of a Pivot table (PT) or a Calculated Table (CT)

PT start to excel in:
1. Flexibility, you can drag fields in/out as required
2. Flexibility, you can change fields summary info easily ie from Sum to Count
3. You can add advanced slicer, timeline slicers etc
4. They can be linked to Pivot Charts adding the above functionality to the charting of the data

PT Suffer from:
Complexity for novice PT users

CT excel in being customised for the specific use

CT's suffer when changes are required ie: changing from Sum to Count

You need to always be aware that PT's expand as field values are added and you need to allow for that in the design of the PT

PT's don't automatically update, so you need to add VBA code if that is required to be automatic
 
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