Specifications
PowerPivot for Excel CHAPTER 10 197
store the data that you selected for the chart. Just as you do with a standard PivotTable or
PivotChart, you select the placeholder and then use the associated eld list to select and
arrange elds for the selected object, as shown in Figure 10-8.
FIGURE 10-8 A PivotChart and PivotTable report
Cube Functions
As an alternative to the symmetrical layout of a PivotTable, you can use cube functions in cell
formulas to arrange PowerPivot data in a free-form arrangement of cells. Cube functions,
introduced in Excel 2007, allow you to query an Analysis Services database and return meta-
data or values from a cube. Because PowerPivot creates an in-memory version of an Analysis
Services database, you can also use cube functions with your PowerPivot data.
Although you can create a formula that uses a cube function in any cell in your PowerPivot
workbook, the simplest way to get started with these functions is to convert an existing Pivot-
Table. To do this, click the OLAP Tools button on the Options tab under PivotTable Tools, and
click Convert To Formulas. The conversion replaces the row and column labels with a formula
using the CUBEMEMBER function and replaces values with the CUBEVALUE function, as shown
in Figure 10-9. The rst argument of either of these functions references the data connection,
which by default is Sandbox for embedded PowerPivot data. All other arguments are point-
ers to dimension member names that dene the coordinates of the value to retrieve from the
in-memory cube.