Excel 2013 brings forward an array of new and exciting features at the finger tips of the data analysts, ranging from a shiny new visualization and exploratory data analysis platform (PowerView) to a number of new pivoting features as well as a powerful in-memory data modelling engine (PowerPivot) enabled by default.

Among all these features, the new Excel delivers a few different options for visualizing geographical and location based data, each visualization technique serving a different purpose (with a specific set of features) or targeting a particular demographic segment of the over-all Excel user-base. This is a short post introducing some techniques for visualizing geo information in Excel.

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The new Office 365 ProPlus is different and very exciting, there is a host of new features that makes this release really stand-out, for example installing this new Office suite will only take 5 seconds, after which you are able to run it and interact with it while it is still finalizing the installation in the background. This is very cool and a change from the usual 1 hour installation process.

What makes Excel 13 really exciting for me is the introduction of the new Power View visualization and data exploration layer baked into this new release. This is what I will be covering throughout this post

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A cheeky wee demo of SQL Server’s PowerPivot Excel Plugin, this introduction video quickly goes through how easy it is to connect to a data-source using PowerPivot, build the relationships between different tables, write a simple DAX query, and eventually use your newly created “mini” model in a Pivot Table with some vertical and horizontal sliders.

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