Some people are experiencing problems when trying to suppress screen updates while macros are running in Excel VBA, under Windows 10. This blog gives one possible solution.

Tags:
VBA macros > General

A short-cut key to bring up the arguments of user-defined functions

Posted by Andy Brown on 17 June 2019

When you discover a new short-cut key, should you share it? This blog shows a way to bring up Intellisense for the arguments to user-defined functions in Excel VBA.

Tags:
Excel > Excel functions VBA macros > Functions / arguments

Why the Excel range name conflict dialog box appears, and how to avoid looping

Posted by Andy Brown on 14 June 2019

When you're copying worksheets containing range names, Excel can detect conflicts and take you into a seemingly endless loop of Yes/No dialog boxes. This blog explains why this happens, and how to get out of the loop!

Tags:
Excel > Formulae

A table-valued function in SQL to split a comma-delimited list

Posted by Andy Brown on 11 June 2019

If you're creating Reporting Services reports using multivalue parameters and stored procedures, you'll find this function to split a list of values into a single-table column useful.

Tags:
SQL > Functions SSRS > Parameters

Wise Owl have found one SQL structure which slows down code more than any other

Posted by Andy Brown on 13 May 2019

If your stored procedures or SQL queries are running slowly, don't bother looking at correlated subqueries, cursors, functions or any of the other usual culprits. There's one SQL syntax which Wise Owl have found to be an order of magnitude worse than any other, as this blog shows.

Tags:
SQL > General

Andy B's five biggest OOH! moments on an Excel training course.

Posted by Andy Brown on 09 May 2019

All trainers live for that moment when someone's face lights up, as they learn something new which will change their working life for the better. This blog lists my 5 biggest such OOH moments from our Excel training courses. How many of these tips do you know?

Tags:
Excel > General

Mapping stored procedure parameters to SSRS parameters

Posted by Andy Brown on 02 May 2019

This blog explains why you might want to use the PARAMETERS tab in the Dataset Properties dialog box in SSRS.

Tags:
SSRS > Parameters

A new acronym for the order of SQL keywords

Posted by Andy Brown on 29 March 2019

Someone has finally won our competition to think of a better acronym for the order of keywords in SQL, we're pleased to announce.

Tags:
SQL > Selecting data

Creating reports in Power BI with dynamic measures or dynamic dimensions

Posted by Andy Brown on 03 January 2019

This blog shows how to create fully dynamic reports, whereby users can choose which statistics to show and which dimensions to report them by.

Tags:
Power BI > General

Showing the top N values of a dimension, where you can use a slicer to vary N

Posted by Andy Brown on 06 December 2018

Following a question from a Power BI course, this blog shows how you can get a page to show the top N customers by sales value, where N is a number controlled by a slicer.

Tags:
Power BI > Measures / DAX

Five methods for creating partitions of SSAS Tabular tables programmatically

Posted by Andy Brown on 23 July 2018

Need to generate a partition for a fact table for each year, product or region? This blog gives five approaches, so that you can choose which method is for you.

Tags:
SSAS tabular > Partitions and processing

Using partitions/processing to load a large fact table into a tabular data model

Posted by Andy Brown on 23 July 2018

This blog shows how you can load the empty structure of a large fact table into an Analysis Services tabular data model, then use partitions to bring in the data bit by bit.

Tags:
SSAS tabular > Partitions and processing

How to get rid of lots of blank rows in a Report Builder table

Posted by Andy Brown on 16 February 2018

There seems to be an occasional bug in Report Builder which fills a table with blank rows. Here's one owl's way to get round it.

Tags:
SSRS > Report Builder

Which should you learn: Report Builder or Reporting Services?

Posted by Andy Brown on 16 February 2018

Report Builder and SQL Server Reporting Services are almost identical - which makes the small but important differences even harder to explain.

Tags:
SSRS > Report Builder SSRS > General

Did you know there was an IIF function in SQL to test conditions? We didn't!

Posted by Andy Brown on 16 February 2018

You can use the IIF function in SQL as an alternative to the CASE WHEN statement. We thought we would share this new (for us) discovery with the world!

Tags:
SQL > Calculations

How to use the Windows Magnifier to zoom in on parts of your screen

Posted by Andy Brown on 29 January 2018

If you're trying to project your screen at the front of a class, the Windows Magnifier lets people see what you're doing more easily.

Tags:
Hardware/software > General IT

How to use an unpivot transform in Power BI Desktop Query Editor

Posted by Andy Brown on 04 January 2018

If you get data in pivot (two-dimensional) form, you can unpivot it to get the underlying rows, and hence produce charts and visuals. This blog shows how!

Tags:
Power BI > Query editor

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BLOGS BY AUTHOR

Wise Owl blogs written by Andy Brown (page 17 of 20)

A different owl's take on the five biggest ooh! moment tips in Excel

This short blog gives a quick Windows short-cut key to insert emojis into text

A quick way to copy the path and name of a file in Windows Explorer

Problems with the Application.ScreenUpdating = False command in VBA

A short-cut key to bring up the arguments of user-defined functions

Why the Excel range name conflict dialog box appears, and how to avoid looping

A table-valued function in SQL to split a comma-delimited list

Wise Owl have found one SQL structure which slows down code more than any other

Andy B's five biggest OOH! moments on an Excel training course.

Mapping stored procedure parameters to SSRS parameters

A new acronym for the order of SQL keywords

Creating reports in Power BI with dynamic measures or dynamic dimensions

Showing the top N values of a dimension, where you can use a slicer to vary N

Five methods for creating partitions of SSAS Tabular tables programmatically

Using partitions/processing to load a large fact table into a tabular data model

How to get rid of lots of blank rows in a Report Builder table

Which should you learn: Report Builder or Reporting Services?

Did you know there was an IIF function in SQL to test conditions? We didn't!

How to use the Windows Magnifier to zoom in on parts of your screen

How to use an unpivot transform in Power BI Desktop Query Editor

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