The term “mixed apples and oranges” is used to describe attempts to link some completely incompatible things. In Excel this often refers to making a strange conglomerate of a Pivot and traditional table. I personally never recommend it, but there are times when such reports are still necessary. With some ingenuity and little help of GETPIVOTDATA and OFFSET functions we’ll be able “to mix apples and oranges”. None of the above were hurt during the process!
“No romance without finance” is part of the lyrics of ’90s hit which point to a major life truth: whatever job you’re doing, sooner or later you are going to review the financial statements. This is inevitable, because the insight into the structure of sources, assets, revenues, expenses and other financial indicators you can learn your position “in space and time ‘, or whether you are doing your job well or not, and where there is room for improvement.
What is the most common problem for programmers and report makers? Certainly, it is a lack of adequate information they need to launch the report and see if it works. Data can be entered manually. But hey: imagine yourself to manually enter 100,000 records!?! This article demonstrates simple techniques to create tables with data to test the most demanding reports.