.NET with BI development tips, tricks and experiences.

When you first install PowerPivot for Sharepoint 2010 and start deploying your workbooks it does not take long to notice that the Sharepoint library preview displays ALL the sheets in your workbooks. This looks pretty awful in what should be a slick gallery, plus the thumbnails are too small to examine data in any meaningful way. As my experience with Excel was pretty limited I naturally thought you would hide the sheets in Sharepoint – WRONG.

Open up your workbook in Excel and right click on the sheet tab and it will have a “Hide” option. Hide all the sheets you don’t want to see and save it back to Sharepoint et voila! No more pesky ugly data sheets. Only nice clean, sexy charts that will make your clients drool.

Immediately the next natural question is how do I get them back in case I have an itchy mouse finger? Right click any remaining sheet and select “Unhide”. You are presented with a list of hidden sheets to re-display.

Pretty simple stuff when you are looking in the right place.

Once again all praise goes to PowerPivot-info.com. This time it is down to their comprehensive installation guide of PowerPivot with SharePoint 2010. I followed their guide meticulously and had no issues whatsoever on my virtual Windows Server 2008 R2 instance. The only problem I had was with the PowerPivot gallery previews being generated once I was installed and deploying PowerPivot workbooks. This was a known issue and covered in their installation guide. I tip my hat gentlemen. Great work guys, you have my gratitude and thanks.