I recently had to perform some analysis on a set of insurance companies in certain geography. After searching the net I found such list of companies operating in that continent. But the problem is,
- These companies are listed multiple times, one time for each of their geographical area of operation.
- I cannot count each company only once since there is geography specific operational data in that list.
- But at the same time, information pertaining to organization like total sales, strategy etc. are common to all the subsidiaries / separate entities of a company.
- There are too many companies to do the manual grouping of companies
I think this type of problems are fairly common in business analytics. So here is a relatively simple solution for getting unique list of companies without losing any information or writing macros. See the example for yourself.
Lets take an example of employee data. You have fields like Person Name (sometimes unique), Previous employment, Previous workplace, Previous Salary. Now, if person Anand worked in more than one place earlier, there will be more than one rows with his name. But for details like DOB, SSN etc. there wont be multiple rows. So you need to know how many uniques rows are there in that huge list. Detailed Steps:
- Enter / copy the data
- Sort the list on person name
- In the column next to prev-company enter the following formula in E2
=IF(OR(LEFT(B2,SEARCH(" ",B2))=LEFT(B3,SEARCH(" ",B3)),LEFT(B2,SEARCH(" ",B2))=LEFT(B1,SEARCH(" ",B1))),LEFT(B2,SEARCH(" ",B2)),B2)
Copy – paste the formula in all the cells in the list for the column. You will see the followin result.
- Now create one more column next to Unique Name with heading Unique?. Paste the following formula in the F2. Apply the formula to all the cells in the list.
=IF(E2=E3,0,1)
Now, you would see the list like this.
- Now sellect the top row and apply “auto filters” [Data->Filter->Auto-Filter] And select 1 in the Unique? column. You will see all the unique names. You can copy paste this list in another sheet/work-book and work with it or assign corresponding codes to each of the unique items in this list.
To summerize:
1. Sort your list first.
2. Get the unique parts like first word / first number etc in another column. In my case I had to use first word.
3. Compare consecutive rows and mark the differences. Now you know how many unique items you have.
Comments / Any better ways of doing this are always welcome.
23 Responses to “Learn Top 10 Excel Features”
What it looks like if excel without formula?? 🙂
It would be not excel it would just be fancy tables in which you could just use power point. (Chandoo) would Access be an alternative?
Awesome piece of work!!!
Great article.
Chandoo - my biggest interest in the article was the awesome word-graphic at the top - where did you go to get it done into a shape?
@Rich.. thank you. I used http://www.tagxedo.com/ to generate this word cloud. I took all the comments in the original post, pasted them in tagxedo website and set up the shape etc.
Awesome Chandoo.. You need always needs coffee to start up with. BTW , how did u created the Heart Shaped picture filled with High Repetitive text in it .. Please put it on your Next blog ...
Chandoo, good article. I’ve added a link to it from Connexion – our collection of the most useful and interesting spreadsheet-related articles from the web. See http://www.i-nth.com/resources/connexion
Hi,
Just one small question. Where the hell have been I in the past for not discovering this website sooner?
I've lost a job interview recently where even though I had the subject knowledge, I was not upto their mark in Excel.
Thank you for all the free tips, guidance and for creating this forum environment.
[PS: I've just been through the site for the 1st time, and have signed up for the newsletter. You can expect pretty stupid questions from me soon]
Hy Chandoo, you always inspire me with to explore something new in excel. This data structure table is only for excel 2007 or compatible to 2010. I recently installed latest excel version 2013 in my System and experience problems regarding operating according to previous one. I'm waiting your article relates to that excel version.
Thanks
Awesome article Mr. Chandoo and that is a awesome heart shaped pic you created. Great tips as well.
[...] Learn Top 10 Excel Features | Chandoo.org – Learn Microsoft Excel Online. [...]
Chandoo is awesome..
Thanks, i got better, And i always get 90.50 in my grade card but now i get 96.50 i improved because of the tutorials you gave, Thank You Very Much Chandoo Guy.
Hi chandoo, i am intersted in seeing the video or step by step done procedure of analysing the comments and presenting in the data percentage steps. I think this one would be first step in finding out how generally happens data calculation. Thank you.
As well i would like to know how to get that black shape art of your face which i see in chandoo. I am interested in making it for me.
Nice to see the features considered by Excel users to be most useful. It might be a good idea to also analyze StackOverflow Excel questions to see what keywords appear most often.
Here are my top 10 Excel Features (for advanced users):
http://www.analystcave.com/excel-10-top-excel-features/
Thanks a ton for this it totally helped with my homework ????
Very good effort
Thank you for this. Lots of learning in the links you've provided for this septuagenarian.
Pls send me new post
Dude, your humor ? ?
Loved your work.
Hello Sir,
I am Sanjeev Khakre and i from Indore City, India , I am your big follower and i have watch your videos and learnt a lots of excel trick or function and many more . thanks so much for all of your excellent support.
Your excel knowledge is real awesome.
Thanks
Sanjeev
Your work is excellent but pls willing to know more details about the features of microsoft excel
Chandoo Would Access be a better alternative than VB?