Data as filter / slicer

Hi Grazi,

Thankyou for your question to the forum.

A Date table in Excel contains multiple fields all relating to different date periods. One such field must contain a primary key which lists all the dates from oldest to newest with no gaps. This date table will need to become part of the data model by creating a 1 to Many relationship with another table containing a date field eg. order date.

Date Tables are great for analysing dates at a more complex level eg. a summary of orders broken down by Region for all 4 Fiscal Quarters/Weekdays or comparing sales Year on Year/Month on Month provided they are related to other tables through the data model

If you just want to use a date slicer to analyse number of orders at day level for each date, there is no need for a date table as you can just use the date field from whichever table you want to analyse on.

I hope this makes sense and has helped you to understand date tables a bit more

Kind regards
Martin Sutherland
IT Trainer