Hello Folks.
I have a rather bad news for you. My internet service provider (TATA Photon) has mysteriously blocked chandoo.org. My site hasn’t been loading since Sunday. While I know it is up and running, I cannot see it unless I go thru a proxy server like kproxy.
It may take a couple of days for this to be resolved. I am using this time to take a break from blogging and read some books that have been waiting. I am almost done with Edward Tufte’s The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
In the meanwhile I have a fun VLOOKUP contest for you.
All you need to do is, share a VLOOKUP trick or tip thru comments.
And the winner gets an iPod nano
Some rules to keep in mind:
- You have to post the entire tip in the comments. No links please.
- You can post as many tips as you want.
- You can post tips on VLOOKUP, INDEX – MATCH, OFFSET – MATCH, HLOOKUP, LOOKUP or lookups done using SUMPRODUCT
- Bonus karma & points for people making an example excel file & linking it along with the tip.
- Contest closes on October 12, End of day (Pacific time, why? because I love the big, blue ocean)
- Winner will be selected randomly.
Go!
Read these excellent articles explaining – VLOOKUP, OFFSET & MATCH, SUMPRODUCT.
PS: If you would like to sponsor this contest, just drop me an email at chandoo.d @ gmail.com
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