Last answered:

11 Apr 2022

Posted on:

29 Mar 2022

0

Couldn't we use a date slicer in Excel?

Hi Elista!
Hope you're doing great, and thanks a lot for your interaction with my questions. I highly appreciate that as there were some instructors who weren't as interactive.

Here I was just wondering if I was rightly thinking that we could've also used a date slicer in Excel to have a similar functionality instead of relying on YTD and LTM date filters. It was a good practice anyway to know how to filter date based on YTD and LTM in Excel. However, my questions are the following:
1. Can we obtain the same exact date range functionality like the one here in Tableau by adding a date slicer in Excel and including it in our Excel Dashboard instead of the YTD and LTM user selection?
2. Wouldn't it be more flexible and convenient (than YTD and LTM criteria), generally speaking, for the user to have a date slicer similar to the brand slicer we had in our Excel Dashboard but this one (the date slicer) being a filter for displaying the data based on the preferred timeline chosen by the user?
Both my questions are for the Excel Dashboard, but they came out only when I realized that the date filter we provided for the user here on Tableau was more flexible than the one we provided with Excel. I just wanted to make sure if it would've been possible to create the same exact functionality as this one but in Excel (through a date slicer in the pivot table).

Thanks!

2 answers ( 0 marked as helpful)
Instructor
Posted on:

11 Apr 2022

1

Hi Anas,
thanks for reaching out and hope you're doing great as well!
To answer your questions:
1. Yes, absolutely you can use a Date Slicer in Excel. I haven't used the functionality myself, but you should be able to achieve the same if not even more flexible slicers with it.
2. Yes, you're right, the date slicer in Tableau is more flexible, so it would be better for the users to have such a slicer in Excel. You're more than welcome to introduce such a slicer to your Excel dashboard, or any future dashboard you create. The goal is always to have flexibility and have in mind what the needs of your customers(or whoever will be using the dashboard) are.

Best,
365 Eli

Posted on:

11 Apr 2022

1

Thank you so much! Such an amazing instructor!

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