Excel Power Pivot & Power Query For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Chapter 13

Ten Ways to Improve Power Pivot Performance

IN THIS CHAPTER

Improving Power Pivot performance

Best practices for avoiding lag

Managing slicer performance

Using views versus tables

The word performance (as it relates to applications and reporting) is typically synonymous with speed — or how quickly an application performs certain actions such as opening within the browser, running queries, or filtering.

Because Power Pivot inherently paves the way for large amounts of data with fairly liberal restrictions, it isn’t uncommon to produce reporting solutions that work but are unbearably slow. And nothing will turn your intended audience away from your slick new reports faster than painfully sluggish performance.

This chapter offers ten actions you can take to optimize the performance of your Power Pivot reports.

Limit the Number of Rows and Columns in Your Data Model Tables

One huge influence on Power Pivot performance is the number of columns you bring, or import, into the data model. Every column you import is one more dimension that Power Pivot has to process when loading ...