Breakout Value

The Breakout Value option is available on the right mouse button pop-up menu when the currently active cell contains an XL3Lookup function, a XL3ValueRankLookup function, or a Grid data cell.

The Breakout Value option allows an interesting piece of data to be further explored and broken down into component parts. For example, if the cell showing Reseller Sales Amount for the United States region in of 2003 is broken out by product, then the result will be the top 10 (or however many items are selected to Breakout by) products for the United States region in 2003. The items broken out can then themselves be broken out by another hierarchy to analyse more deeply.

1. Select a cell to analyse
2. Select Break Out from the right mouse button pop-up menu
3. The Breakout dialog appears:
   
   • The Position to insert breakout is used to specify the starting cell on the spread sheet where the Breakout values are to be inserted
   • The Hierarchy to breakout field is used to select a dimension to use to Break out the cell value
   • Show top or bottom members and Breakout count determines the number of rows of Breakout information that are generated, and whether they should be of the highest or lowest ranked members
   • The How to breakout hierarchy field (when Breaking out from a Grid), or the Rank by selection field (when Breaking out a formula) is used to choose a selection from the Breakout hierarchy
   • The options checkboxes allows you to configure whether headings, etc. should be shown
   • When Breakout is used on a Grid, the option to insert a Trend Sparkline is available. This will add a chart per member that is returned in the breakout, showing the selected trend.
4. The result is inserted into the sheet.
5. An item in the Breakout can then be further broken out.

See Also

• Breakout and Propagate – Oldies but Goodies on the XLCubed Blog