Workbook slicers – all for one and one for all!

So this is our second blog on the new features of XLCubed v8 – today we’re going to run through workbook slicers.

Workbook slicers allow the user to create the slicers at the workbook level so that they can be displayed for any/all sheets.

There’s a slicer pane which can be arranged horizontally or vertically and stays in place when you navigate to another sheet.  This means that if you have a multi-sheet workbook you only need to define one set of slicers.  These can then configured to be shown or hidden for individual sheets as required.

Turn the slicer pane on by selecting Workbook slicers from the XLCubed ribbon, Slicers tab:

Within the slicer pane there’s an Add Slicer button – this brings up the standard design form for adding slicers.

The Edit layout button brings up the window below.  It allows you to configure the order in which slicers will appear on the pane, which sheets they will be visible on and the padding between individual slicers.  You can also set a background fill colour from here.

The screenshot above shows that the Date.Calendar slicer is available on a number of sheets.  Selecting a slicer choice on one sheet will refresh the other sheets where the slicer is also available:

Once added, you link workbook slicers to your report in the same way as embedded slicers.  You can link directly to grids and other XLCubed objects and output their selection to Excel cell locations for use by formulae.

Their positioning on the web is fixed but if you find the slicers are taking up too much screen space you can make your slicer selections and then use this icon to toggle the Slicer Pane off: