Has THIS ever happened to you? We’re not even out of the Aarons yet.
Simple and Slick
Yesterday I saw Ken Puls post a really simple and effective trick – intentionally introducing a BLANK() measure in your pivot just to add a spacer column or row – and my response was “simple and slick, I like it.”
Well today I’m in Michigan, conducting some PowerPivot training/consulting, and that makes today a great day for a similarly slick and simple trick. Because hey, I’m not even here right now. Who’s writing this post?? 
First Initial!
Over in the Customers table in the PowerPivot window, add a simple calc column:
No Slicer “Left” Behind!
Now add that field to the pivot as a second slicer:
And if you want, you can then go back and add a First Initial slicer too…
Lastly you may want to turn cross-filtering OFF for the First and Last Initial slicers – you really only need it “on” for the FullName slicer, and it will slow down your report to leave it enabled for the initiails.
See this post for details on cross filtering.
