pivotronics

Here is a scenario that I come across sometime ago when I received an Excel file with some apparently messy data for further processing to generate another report. The data in the file appear similar to below screenshot. This data is self-explanatory. It’s the sales in units and dollars of each product under each product category made by each sales person. If you observe the data, for all the sales made by each sales person, name of the sales person is listed only once. Same goes with product category appearing only once for each product.

Now the challenge is to flatten the data in a way that for each product row, respective product category and sales person name should get repeated. Only then, it becomes consumable in downstream process for further preparation of another report. By the way, this is just some fictitious small amount of data. The file I received has more than a few thousands of records, which means it’s not feasible to perform this task manually.

By the way, this kind of data mess happens when you copy the data from a PivotTable report in Tabular Layout, with Repeat All Item Labels option not selected under Layout group of Design tab, +/- toggle button disabled under Show group of Analyze tab of PivotTable Tools ribbon; and then paste the values of such copied data to different location for the further sharing, like it was shared with me.

Here is a magical trick to complete this task accurately in just a couple of steps:

Step.1. Apply filter to the header row. Click on Salesperson field filter drop down. Deselect all items and then select only blanks. Hit OK.

The data looks as below after this step.

Step:2. After applying the filters, observe that the cell address of the first blank cell in Salesperson column is A4 (boxed in red). This means that the cell above A4 (i.e., cell A3) is the first non-blank cell. This gives us a logic that the value in A4 should have been the same as the value in cell A3. So, just enter the formula =A3 in cell A4. The same logic applies for all the other blank cells too. So, copy the formula to the rest of the blank cells. After this, clear the applied filters from salesperson column header. That works the MAGIC..!! This completely fills up all the blank cells in the Salesperson column accurately as in the below screenshot:

Repeat these two steps for Category column as well. The magical trick works there too..!!

For more such tricks follow the blog. Hit the likes if you like the trick. Happy Learning..!!