Hello.
I am just now getting into and learning about Power Query and Power Pivot without any prior experience with pivot tables of any kind. The reason I’m looking into these is to try and upgrade and simplify an Excel billing report system I created over 10 years ago to make it easier on those who are currently working with them.
I am starting to work on creating a new billing report system, but I’m a bit confused on how to do something. I’ve looked through videos on YouTube, as well as Googled for help, but I’m not sure I’m finding the answers to my particular situation and hope someone can help me with this.
I am creating these new reports at a remote location, which I’ll need to later upload to a company server so others can access and do the necessary steps each month with manually entering some data and preparing the reports for printing. If I create these reports, along with power queries and possibly power pivots, once I upload them to our server will the other users be able to access and manage the files? I would be uploading all the necessary files for which power queries and power pivots would need to a folder on the server, but unsure if the other users who have limited at best knowledge and experience with Excel would be able to use them if it’s too involved of a process for them. How can I best tackle this issue with ease for them.
Thank you.
As long as the subsequent files that PQ is pulling the information from are in a shared file there should be no issues using PQ. I have spreadsheets I set up for the novice users in my office, and I label the files very clearly (her file is literally called "01 Save First" and "02 Template"). I am just very clear, pull your report and save it in "01 Save First" then update the data in "02 Template" and then your Excel work is done. I haven't had any issues.
Okay. Thank you. So, the PQ stays with the files then when they are uploaded to a shared folder? That helps a lot. Is there anything I need to do before uploading the files to ensure it can be processed correctly?
One other question for you. Currently we copy files from one month folder to the next month folder (ex. from the "April 2023" to "May 2023" folder), update the links for the current month, and then clear out the manually entered data from the previous month before manually entering data for the current month. What would be the best way, and perhaps the easiest, to structure this if I end up rebuilding the whole report from scratch, at least for the most part? Keep doing as we have been by copying files from one folder to the next, or have all the data each month entered into one data file for the fiscal year and generating multiple reports for each respective month? For that matter, if manually entering the data each month within one data file for the whole year, could the generated reports be automatically saved within the respective month/year folders? I'm sorry, that is more than one other question.
Thanks again for all your help and input for this Power Query, Power Pivot, and pivot table novice. It is greatly appreciated. Wish I had known about these years ago, but better late than never, right? 🙂
