Importing cross-tabbed data
Data files do not always come in tabular shape; more often than not they are cross-tabbed with some attributes on columns and others on rows. A very typical scenario is a worksheet with a time dimension in the columns headers (months, years…) like this one: http://xls.apphb.com/Ch13X2.xlsx, which represents the total expenditure per capita on health in different countries from 1995 to 2010. As you can see there are country names on rows and years on columns. The metric name is actually in cell A1.
MicroStrategy Express has the option to uncross this kind of files, pivoting the year on rows, and converting it to an attribute.
Getting ready
From now on, I will use the Chrome browser instead of IE, the main reason is that Chrome has better support of HTML5, which we'll need in the next recipes. So, if you don't have it already, please download and install it from http://at5.us/Ch13U5. In Chrome (as in other browsers), you can use the F11 key to toggle between full screen...
