How to Create an OLAP Cube in Excel

OLAP stands for Online Analytical Processing. People use OLAP functions when they want to organize a lot of data. For example, if a person had sales data from 2000 to 2010 that he wanted to organize by purchase amount, an OLAP cube would organize his information into much more helpful graphs and tables.

How to create an OLAP Cube

Select the "Data" option at the top of the page followed by "PivotTable and PivotChart Report"

Select "External Data Source" before pressing next to continue.

Press "Get Data," which will open the "Choose Data Source" dialogue.

Select the program from the list in which your data is located. It could be Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Access or another program that you used to store the data.

Select the tables and fields that you are interested in before pressing "Next."

Once you have selected the information that you want to organize, press "File" and then select "Create OLAP Cube."

Select the fields that you want to make visible as summarized fields. Press "Next" when you're finished.

Create the dimensions of your cube file. In this step, you'll be able to create sub-fields for the data. Press "Next" once you finish this step.

To make the data work with Excel, select "Save a cube file containing all of the data for the cube." Press "Finish" to end the creation of your OLAP cube.