Interactive Excel Sample Data

There’s sample data on my Contextures website, and it’s useful for testing formulas and pivot tables in Excel.

On that page, there’s a link to a downloadable Excel file, with the same sample data. Or, you could just copy and paste the data into a workbook.

Now With Interaction

Now, thanks to Microsoft’s Excel Services, you can play with the data in Excel Interactive View. Just click the button above the sample data table, and the interactive view will open up.

Note: I’ve added the same feature to my Excel Book List page.

At the left, the Filters tab is selected, and you can click on any field name, to see its items. Then, click on an item to filter the table.

Sort the Data

In the data table, you can click any of the headings, to sort that column.

To sort it in the opposite order, click the heading again.

Create a Chart

You can also create a quick chart from the data. In the View panel at the right, click one of the chart views. On my Sample Data page, there is a chart view for each of the Value fields – Units, Cost and Total.

Here is the chart for Total values.

Table View With Data Bars

To return to Table view, click Table in the View panel.

The value fields in the table also show Data Bars, like the ones you can add in Excel, with Conditional Formatting.

Save and Print the Data

In the interactive view, you can also save and print the data. To print it, click the Options tab (gear icon), and click Print.

To download the data, click the Do More tab (X icon), and click Download.

Open in Excel Web App

To work with the data online, click on the Do More tab, then click Open in Excel Web App. In there, you can add formulas, and change the data, and use the other features available.

Add an Excel Interactive View on Your Site

To add an Excel interactive view to a table on your site, go to the Excel Mashup website. Click the Learn How link, to go to the page with instructions.

It’s easy to do:

1. Select a button style
2. Enter a title
3. Add your website name
4. Click the Generate Code button.

Follow the instructions in the two steps, to copy the code, and paste it into your website source code.

Then click Close, to go back to the web page.

Try the Interactive Excel View

To see how the interactive view works, go to the sample data page on my Contextures website, click the green button to get started.

Thanks Microsoft – this is an awesome new feature!

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