Comments on: Excel Dashboards: do you need VBA?

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 13:03:53 +0000

I have been using XML and xml mappings to bring in data to my Excel dashboard. The source database exports to xml and “live data” can be updated when the user refreshes. The data is in tables, then can be formatted and manipulated further. The flexibility is excellent.

I have learned a lot from your site already and look forward to following it!
Thanks!

By: T

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 01:49:05 +0000

If there is a time and resource efficient effective system to train all those within a company in Excel on a regular, continual basis then Charley Kyd’s justification for avoiding VBA and advanced Excel becomes irrelevant. A culture of self empowerment and education needs to be fostered to avoid reliance and dependance on the individuals that currently hold the knowledge.

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Are Excel Charts Hurting Your Business? 10 Mistakes You Should Avoid. — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:15:36 +0000

[...] break this to you, but if you spend your time analyzing data and Excel is your primary tool, then you must use VBA. I’m not telling you should be a programmer, far from it. But you should be able to record a [...]

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Performance vs flexibility in Excel: Demographic Dashboard Lookup Edition — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 16:33:09 +0000

[...] partially because of a discussion around the use of VBA, I launched the VBA-free edition. It still uses pivot tables but I managed to remove all the VBA. [...]

By: Dashboards | PTS Blog

Dashboards | PTS Blog — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 01:30:22 +0000

[...] as reviews of other charting products. His Excel posts include How to create a dashboard in Excel, Excel Dashboards: do you need VBA?, and 10 tips to improve your Excel dashboard. Jorge has reviewed the use of Crystal Xcelsius as a [...]

By: admin

admin — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 06:26:59 +0000

@Chris: we don’t disagree: the moment I start finding errors in pivot tables I’ll stop using them.

@ Jose: The key is always Occam’s razor: the simplest solution is the best. If you can do it without VBA do it. If the combination of functions becomes unmanageable, use VBA instead or find a better solution.

By: Jose Hernandez

Jose Hernandez — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 23:13:02 +0000

Jorge has a good point in that Pivot Tables are create the need to use VBA. However I work in an environment similar to Charles Kyd’s description using VBA takes a huge toll in the sustainability.

For me there is an additional cost: VBA makes it impossible TODAY to leverage any excel-to-web offerings, in our outside your organization firewall (Editgrid / GoogleDocs/ MS Excel Services / Jedox Spredasheet Services).

Perhaps I coincide in the path taken recently by Jorge in that I’ve implemented Pivot Table functionality across multiple tables without them nor VBA; this is achieved by a combination of functions. Basically:

1) database / webqueries which have the nice option of refresh upon open.
2) nameranges that mapped to the query output
3) Index, match and rank

Again, thanks and credit goes to Charles Kyd for providing detailed examples to understand this hidden Excel Gems.

Regards,

Jose

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 20:52:08 +0000

I think you are correct about VBA instead of formulas and lookups, but I will disagree with you about using pivot tables. I have found errors in my pivot tables–especially when I have played with them in VBA.

My development team wrote their own code that gives me pivot table functionality but it is completely transparent to me and I can catch it when it has a bug. It may be a bit slower than the magic of pivot tables (in Excel 97 and 2000), but I was always willing to make the tradeoff.