COLUMN.PARENT

Retrieves the immediate parent of a column within a column hierarchy for hierarchical calculations.

The COLUMN.PARENT function returns the immediate parent of the current column in a column hierarchy. It allows you to reference higher-level members such as Quarter from Month or Year from Quarter.

Chaining is supported - for example, COLUMN.PARENT.PARENT returns the grandparent of the current column, enabling multi-level hierarchy navigation.

Example

1. Calculation using COLUMN.PARENT

We want to calculate the percentage sales contribution from January to the first quarter.

One way to calculate would be to select the 'Units Sold' column of January and divide it by the 'Units Sold' column under Qtr1.

Instead, we can use the reference 'COLUMN.PARENT' to refer to Qtr1 as it is the immediate parent of January. In the below image, you can see that for January in the Canada region, % Contribution is calculated as 14.26/34.43 resulting in 41.40%.

Calculating %contribution from January to Quarter1

2. Calculation using COLUMN.PARENT.PARENT

You can calculate the % sales contribution from January to the entire year using COLUMN.PARENT.PARENT.

Calculating %contribution from January to the entire year