Original subtitles

In the previous lesson, we saw how we can filter our data by using slices.

And if you recall when we inserted a slice, if I click on this chart and got to pivot to analyze,

I pointed out that we have two options insert, slice and insert timeline.

So this is what we're going to look at in this lesson, because timelines differ very slightly from

slices.

Effectively, a timeline is still a slice, but it's only used for dates.

So if you have a data source that doesn't contain any dates when you click on Insert Timeline, you're

not going to have access to any fields to use for your slicer.

If I click in set timeline, you can see that it's recognizing that I have a date column in my source

data.

Now, a little issue that can occur here and I've seen this happen many times is that people do have

a date column in their data, but when they click on Insert Timeline, it doesn't show the column.

Now the reason why that happens is because you don't have that column formatted as a date.

So if you do have dates in your data, but you're not seeing them appear in here, go back to your original

source data and check to make sure your date column has the correct formatting applied.

And if I click in my column, you can see up here I have dates formatting.

So let's insert a timeline using the date column.

Let's click on.

OK, now a timeline looks pretty different to our regular slices.

And in general, you kind of see these normally at the top of a page.

So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to make a bit of room in row one.

I'm going to drag this column or this row, I should say down and then I'm going to move.

So let's do a control x to cut the timeline slice up here so we can just reposition that and we can

readjust that row if we need to.

Now, a timeline slice basically allows you to select different time periods.

And again, this is all based on your source data.

So in my source data, I only have data for 2018 and 2019.

So I'm seeing those two years and all of the months.

So if I'm just interested in looking at data from mid-2018 to mid-2019, I can use my slicer and adjust

it.

And everything below is going to update if I just want to see for a few months, I can select those

months and my pivot and my pivot table update.

So these are a really nice, interactive way of dealing with time based data.

Now, remember, in the last lesson, we applied quite a bit of formatting to our slices just to make

them look cleaner and more in tune with the overall theme.

And one of the things we did was we removed the header.

And if you recall, I said to you that when you remove the header, you also remove the clear filter

button.

And that is exactly what we can see here.

If we look over on the right hand side, we have this little button which will reset and effectively

clear any filtering that you've applied.

Now we're going to apply similar formatting to this slice just to keep everything consistent.

If we click on the time line notice we have a time line, contextual ribbon and we can do pretty much

the same thing.

We can apply different time line styles.

So let's go with this light green.

And if you take a look at the end group, the show group notice that currently we're showing the header,

the selection label, the time level and the scroll bar.

This is really where you can customize what you're seeing on this slicer.

So if I want to remove the header, I can just select it.

Maybe I don't want selection labels either, or the time level I can just keep it like that if I just

drag this out a little bit so we can see that scrollbar.

But now that slice looks a lot cleaner.

Once again, if we want to do things like remove the outside border, we could do that as well.

Remember, you have to right click and duplicate the style that you've applied and give it a new name.

So I'm going to call mine d a timeline slicer.

We're going to select the whole timeline.

Click on formats.

Let's go to the Border tab, and I'm going to say that I don't want any borders.

Click on OK.

And okay again.

And now we need to go in and apply our custom slicer.

And what I would probably do here is on this worksheet just to make everything look super clean.

I would probably turn off grid lines for this worksheet as well.

So up to view and in the show group, I'm going to select grid lines, so I have a really nice, clean

look.

And of course, you can move these around a little bit to make it look a little bit neater.

You might even want to just pull this in so that it's kind of the same width as everything else below.

So that is the difference between your regular slices and your time line slices.

Timelines are purely there to let you filter by dates.