Darren writes one of my favorite blogs – Problogger, it is a blog about blogging. It is super helpful for people like me who write, connect, share and sell online. A week back, Darren asked his readers to participate in a fun experiment by posting 7 links on their blogs. It seemed like an interesting idea, so I am chipping in.
1. My First Post on Excel: While this blog is in existence since 2004, I did not start writing about excel until 2006. My first post on excel is How to remove duplicates. This was not written on chandoo.org, but on my excel blog r1c1.blogspot.com which I later imported here.
2. The post I enjoyed writing most: Now, this is difficult to choose. Because, writing is not what I enjoy most. My enjoyment comes when an article generates a lot of conversation (comments, discussion on other blogs etc.). To that extent, the most enjoyed post is Become a Conditional Formatting Rockstar.
3. Post(s) that had great discussion: I am proud of our community here. Most of the posts generate quite a bit of discussion and sharing of ideas. Here is a list of posts that had lots of insightful comments:
- Do you know these double click tricks? – 86 comments
- Introduction to VLOOKUP, MATCH and OFFSET formulas – 75 comments
- Become a Conditional Formatting Rockstar – 180 comments
- Calculating Days Overlapped Between 2 sets of dates – 46 comments
- Childhood dream comes true – story of Chandoo.org – 86 comments
- Excel Keyboard Shortcuts – Open Thread – 66 comments [read followup Comprehensive list of keyboard shortcuts in Excel which consolidates all these shortcuts in to one post]
4. A post on someone else’s blog that I wish I’d written: 2 posts come to mind. First one is Debra’s unbelievably comprehensive collection of Pivot Table tips & tricks. Next one is Jon’s detailed overview of number formats in excel. Both of them are very well structured, highly sought after topics that I wish I had written. I refer to them every now and then when I am stuck and need help.
5. A post title that I am most proud of: Hands down it has to be Want to be a conditional formatting rock star? Read this. But I also like Twins, Clones and Duplicates – 6 Excel Shortcuts from an Excited Dad which I wrote from hospital room when I became dad to twins in Sept, 2009.
6. A post I wish more people had read: hmm, it could be the Date with my sheet – 10 tips on using date / time in Excel, which despite having a lot of tips, never really took off.
7. Most read post ever: It has to be the Gantt Charts – Project Management using Excel post. Written on June 16th, last year, the post attracted 150k page views so far, with 63 comments. The post also played a crucial role in 630+ sales of Project Management Templates.
One Question for you:
What is your most favorite post on Chandoo.org and why do you like it? Please share using comments.
PS: If you are not in mood for excel, here is something to get you excited. Some one calls me a bastard and it made me laugh. Find out why.
13 Responses to “Data Validation using an Unsorted column with Duplicate Entries as a Source List”
Pivot Table will involve manual intervention; hence I prefer to use the 'countif remove duplicate trick' along with 'text sorting formula trick; then using the offset with len to name the final range for validation.
if using the pivot table, set the sort to Ascending, so the list in the validation cell comes back alphabetically.
Hui: Brillant neat idea.
Vipul: I am intrigued by what you are saying. Please is it possible to show us how it can be done, because as u said Hui's method requires user intervention.
Thks to PHD and all
K
Table names dont work directly inside Data validation.
You will have to define a name and point it to the table name and then use the name inside validation
Eg MyClient : Refers to :=Table1[Client]
And then in the list validation say = MyClient
Kieranz,
Pls download the sample here http://cid-e98339d969073094.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/data-validation-unsorted-list-example.xls
Off course there are many other ways of doing the same and integrating the formulae in multiple columns into one.
Pls refer to column FGHI in that file. Cell G4 is where my validation is.
Vipul:
Many thks, will study it latter.
Rgds
K
[...] to chandoo for the idea of getting unique list using Pivot tables. What we do is that create a pivot table [...]
@Vipul:
Thanks, that was awesome! 🙂
@Playercharlie Happy to hear that 🙂
Great contribution, Hui. Solved a problem of many years!
Thanks to you, A LOT
Hi Hui,
Greeting
hope you are doing well.
I'm interested to send you a private vba excel file which i need to show detail of pivot in new workbook instead of showing in same workbook as new sheet.
Please contact me on muhammed.ye@gmail.com
Best Regards