OllyXLSM

Why is there no "count distinct" function in Excel, or at least a "dimension count" in pivot tables?

Do you ever feel frustrated that although Excel has such high market penetration, the majority of users have no idea just how good and powerful Excel actually is? And do you wish that there was more emphasis placed on advertising existing capability, and on training users?

Thanks for the reply :) I think the 'wizards' and guided analysis functions in recent versions are going in the right direction...

The majority of remedial issues I encounter are caused by poor initial workbook design though, rather than functional limitations. Maybe there's a requirement for some sort of 'data solution' wizard, which helps users design a normalised data structure, with associated input - transform guided steps, as well as the (already good) guided analysis functions? Lots of functionality relies on having well structured source data, but there's little native support and guidance on how to achieve this. :)

Thanks for the reply, Dan! I appreciate that feature requests are many :) But, this would make Excel the killer BI app, as WELL as the killer desktop app. I can't wait for it, so I can stop developing workarounds!

Thanks, but again, this relies on code, rather than native functionality. Deploying code is far harder than deploying plain workbooks. Although it;s probably been decades since VBA was the weapon of choice for the virus merchants, it's still a hurdle to overcome when deploying workbook solutions to remote offices, and native solutions make outcomes so much easier to accept.