If you have a colleague who trusts you, you could always betray this trust by sending them a workbook which misbehaves: it won't close and you can't leave it!

You can use BEGIN TRY to trap errors from SQL Server 2005 onwards, and also raise your own errors using RAISERROR or THROW - this blog explains all!

For the sake of completeness, this blog explains how to join to the results of table-valued functions (like a correlated subquery on steroids).

A quick blog on how to change the scope of any variable in SQL Server Integration Services 2012.

A short blog explaining why you might have problems connecting to an Excel workbook from SSIS.

How to store the name of each file in a folder in a SQL Server table using an Integration Services package.

SEO may not be rocket science, but it shares a big principle with theoretical physics, as this blog explains.

If your chart has more than a thousand data labels, this blog explains why you may experience problems.

This blog shows how to use each of the 5 arguments of the RANKX function to rank rows in PowerPivot.

This blog shows you how to create table-valued functions in SQL (ie functions which return a table of data!).

Table variables allow you to hold rows of data in temporary storage, without any processing overhead. Read this blog to add this technique to your SQL armoury!

PowerPivot is a superb addition to Excel: it allows you to create pivot tables based on multiple tables taken from a variety of data sources, and its DAX language lets you report any statistic you want. This overview summarises how to get started with PowerPivot, and what it does.

Excel 2013 contains radical changes to charts, pivot tables and the user interface. This review explains all the new features of Excel 2013

You can use the IF statement to test conditions in SQL - this blog explains how, and also explains why you might prefer to use CASE WHEN instead.

SQL comes complete with a few useful global variables, giving you information such as the row number of the record just inserted, or the number of rows affected by a query. Here's how to use them!

This blog shows you how to create a calendar of dates for use in PowerPivot. Instructions are included for Excel and Access.

A short blog explaining how to use the keyboard to cycle through previous cursor positions.

This blog includes the SQL script to generate a table of calendar dates for linking to from within PowerPivot.

Variables in SQL always begin with @, and allow you to program more efficiently. Learn the tips and tricks in this short series of blogs!

Views are queries that you can save and reuse; but you can also use them as a basis for further queries. They do have their foibles too, as this blog explores.