Introduction to Power Pivot - Microsoft Business Intelligence Tools for Excel Analysts - page 53

3. Build your needed analysis just as you would any other standard PivotTable, using the Pivot
Field List.
Turn to Chapter 2 if you need to configure a PivotTable with the Pivot Field List.
The PivotTable shown in Figure 3-10 contains all the tables in the Power Pivot Data Model. With this
configuration, you have a powerful cross-table analytical engine in the form of a familiar PivotTable.
From here, you can calculate the average Unit Price by customer.
Figure 3-10: You now have a Power Pivot-driven PivotTable that aggregates across multiple tables.
In the days before Power Pivot, this analysis would have been difficult to get to. You needed to build
vlookup formulas to get from Customer to Invoice Numbers, then another set of vlookup formu-
las to get from Invoice Numbers to Invoice Details. And after all that formula building, you still
wouldn't have a way to aggregate the data to average Unit Price per customer.
With Power Pivot, you get to your analysis in just a few clicks!
Enhancing Power Pivot Data
with Calculated Columns
When analyzing data with Power Pivot, you may need to expand your analysis to include data based
on calculations that are not in your original dataset. Power Pivot provides a way to add your own calcu-
lations with calculated columns. Calculated columns are columns you create to enhance a Power Pivot
table with your own formulas. Calculated columns are entered directly in the Power Pivot window,
becoming part of the source data you use to feed your PivotTable. Calculated columns work at the row