If your company data comes from multiple sources or you find that the limit of 17 million cells in an Excel 2003 sheet (17 billion in an Excel 2007-2010 workbook format) is a problem, get some PowerPivot love in Excel 2010.

Power What?

An add-on for Excel 2010 (or SharePoint, actually) called PowerPivot released by Microsoft allows you to generate reports by combining data from huge and numerous datasets i.e. combine data from Excel, Access, SAP, SQL, Feeds and summarise them into neat PivotTables or PivotCharts.

Who can user PowerPivots?

With a bit of training, anyone. The PowerPivot tab in Excel 2010 looks and feels like, well, any other Excel 2010 tab.  The PowerPivot window offers a simple and intuitive interface to connect to your data sources and combine them.

You are at an advantage if you are familiar with: database relationships – Microsoft Access relies on them, now is a good idea to brush up on the topic); queries – again, Microsoft Access is a good introduction to them but your previous experience with SQL or the old Excel Query window will give you a head start) and PivotTable Reports and PivotCharts

 

where do I install the PowerPivot add-on from?