Excel PowerPivot - Working with grouped rows

Question

I'm working on a really large excel sheet which is basically a list of users along with the applications they use. Now the problem is that there are over 60000 users with atleast 10 applications each. So its a huge sheet. 2-3 times a week I need to extract the details of the applications used by certain specific users. Sometimes it's 2 users. Sometimes its 10 users. But due to the size of the spreadsheet, this activity takes me forever (1-2 hours).

Now, the sheet is structured in the following way.

StaffId Name       DeviceNo      Location       ApplicationCount+    AppID   Application Name

12345   John Doe   DSK-982333    Mespil Road    24+    
                                                                     123     Adobe Acrobat
                                                                     234     WinZip
                                                                     345     Google Chrome

The + sign here is to indicate the grouped rows.

Is there anyway for me to use PowerPivots to extract this information?

Answer 1

One approach would be to:

1. Create a copy of your spreadsheet in a new workbook.
2. Add another worksheet in the workbook that contains the StaffId (in column "A") of the people you want to filter for.

3. In the VBA editor, insert a new module and add the following code:

    Sub FilterForUsersOfInterest() Dim BigSheet As Worksheet Dim ListSheet As Worksheet Dim lastCell As Range Set BigSheet = ActiveWorkbook.Sheets("ListOfApplications") 'Change the sheet name here to match your main data tab Set ListSheet = ActiveWorkbook.Sheets("ListOfUsers") 'Change the sheet name here to match your sheet with the users of interest this time round 'Find the last used row on the worksheet Set lastCell = BigSheet.UsedRange.Item(BigSheet.UsedRange.Cells.Count) 'Copy the values for Staff Id down all the rows For iRow = 2 To lastCell.Row If BigSheet.Range("A" & iRow) = "" Then BigSheet.Range("A" & iRow) = BigSheet.Range("A" & iRow - 1) End If Next iRow 'Now work your way back up the rows, deleting any rows where the StaffId is not found in the current list of "users of interest" For iRow = lastCell.Row To 2 If Application.WorksheetFunction.CountIf(ListSheet.Range("A:A"), BigSheet.Range("A" & iRow)) = 0 Then BigSheet.Range("A" & iRow).EntireRow.Delete End If Next iRow End Sub