New Beginner Course on PluralSight!

Go watch my new PluralSight course!

http://www.pluralsight.com/courses/qlikview-create-data-discovery-tool

It's intended for the absolute beginner, so keep that in mind when you send me your accolades!

And for those that come here for the jokes....

When my wife told me to stop impersonating a flamingo I had to put my foot down.

Circle Takes the Square

Did you ever think to yourself, "Why was Paul Lynde always the center square? What's wrong with Soupy Sales? And for hell's sake, shouldn't Charo be the center of everyone's game show universe?"

If you did, then you were also alive the last time I posted a tip. So, quicker than you can say 'cuchi cuchi', here's your Tip:

Make a Round Text Object

Missed it by that much...

You've built a beautiful chart. Removed the Caption Bar, because we all know those are ugly. You changed the Title Settings to Divider, Left Justified. It's so beautiful that you want to copy it and use it with another metric. Just Ctrl-click and drag, but you missed the border by that much...

Try 99 times Agent 86, but you're too shaky. You should have had the small Red Bull, not the big one. That crosshair just won't stay on the border!

What to do? So simple you don't even have to click through to suffer through more bad jokes...

Just hold down Ctrl+Alt while you click and drag. You can click anywhere on the object. You can have the big Red Bull and not worry about the shakes. I wish I would have known about this a couple of years ago.

Sharing is Caring

Tweet This!

It hurts me to title this post 'Sharing is Caring'. Sure, I could try to work in a Care Bears joke. There's probably even a Valley Girl hook. Whatever.

But with good old Vlad puttin' the 'what's yours is mine and what's mine is mine' back in communism, sharing this is definitely worth a thousand rubles:

So, in the spirit of sharing everything you have with mother Russia, let's share your apps with folks that aren't privileged members of the party.

Session Collaboration

Invariably Ignored

Harold Ramis died this week. Most of you are saying to yourself, "Aw, that's sad... Now remind me who he is?"

Without Harold, modern society wouldn't be possible.

He wrote, directed, produced or starred in the most important films of all time. Caddyshack. Vacation. Year One. Animal House. Ghostbusters. Heavy Metal. Stripes.

Not to mention the most hated, most reviled, worst movie ever, Groundhog Day. I'm not kidding. Don't watch it. If you have watched it, forget it. Delete it from Wikipedia's Harold Ramis page. If you see it in the store, yell at the store manager and throw every copy in the trash. Then find Bill Murray and Zombieland his ass. Then do it all again. And again. And again.

Ignore it. Just like you need to ignore fields with your set analysis.

No Dumb Buttons

Oh, this your button, huh? A lovely button. Hey baby, you must've been something before electricity.

Listen... do you smell something? Maybe that since my last post, Kill the Button, that I'm on a button jihad? Calm down... how about a Fresca? I'm just trying to get you to stop making crappy* stuff. But this isn't about that, because you already know how to make a button a 'link'. This is a technique I learned from a post by Steve Dark. When you're using your button (link) to show/hide the Current Selections, tell the user if there's nothing selected.

Step One - Read Kill the Button

Make your button (link) that shows and hides the Current Selection box.

Kill the Button

A Priest, a Rabbi and Mormon Missionaries walk into a bar. The bartender says, 'Is this some kind of a joke?'

Half of you are giggling like school girls, half of you are waiting for the punchline, and the rest haven't read this post yet. Because if you have and you're smarter than the average bear, you'd know how funny that is! A simple joke for a simple folk...

Which brings me to one of my ongoing themes... Simplicity. Standard buttons in QlikView are not simple. They look like a blue NyQuil: