PowerPivot to the People (Getting Started with PowerPivot for Excel)
New with SQL Server 2008 R2, PowerPivot is an extension of Analytical Services providing power users with a familiar tool for analyzing massive amounts of data from disparate sources (including web and data feeds). PowerPivot comes in two flavors: PowerPivot for Excel and PowerPivot for Sharepoint. This article gets you started with PowerPivot for Excel.
Installing PowerPivot
The PowerPivot plugin for Excel can be downloaded from the official PowerPivot site: www.powerpivot.com.
PowerPivot can be installed on both x86 and x64 systems including Windows XP sp3, Windows Vista sp1, and Windows 7. If you aren’t installing it on Windows 7, you will need to install .Net Framework 3.5 SP1.
Tags: introduction, excel