The other day, while I was putting my kids to sleep, this idea came to me. How do I check if a cell contains a palindrome, using Excel formulas?
Next morning, I wrestled with excel for about 20 minutes and boom, the formula is ready.
Here is how it works:
If you enter a word or phrase in column B, it would tell you whether it is a palindrome or not.
But what is a palindrome?
A palindrome is a word, phrase, verse, or sentence that reads the same backward or forward. For example: A man, a plan, a canal, Panama!
[definition from palindromelist.net]
So, to check if a cell contains palindrome, we need to reverse the cell contents and see if both original and reverse are the same.
For example if B1 contains MAN, then the reverse would be NAM and hence MAN is not a palindrome.
But how do we write a formula to check if a cell has palindrome?
- Assuming B1 contains the word (or phrase), the first step is to clean it. That means, we need to remove any spaces, commas, exclamation marks & other punctuation symbols. So a phrase like “Cigar? Toss it in a can. It is so tragic.” would become “CigarTossitinacanItissotragic”.
- The next step is to match this cleaned text (lets say this will be C1) with the reverse of it.
- But there is no reverse formula. So we use MID() to extract one letter at a time and match it with the corresponding letter from end. (ie first letter with last letter, second letter with second last letter etc.)
- To do this, we use,
MID(C1,ROW(OFFSET($A$1,,,LEN(C1))),1=MID(C1,LEN(C1)-ROW(OFFSET($A$1,,,LEN(C1)))+1,1) - The left portion of this formula would give individual letters in C1 in left to right order and the right portion would give same in reverse order.
- We wrap this in a lovely SUMPRODUCT formula so that we can check for palindrome-ness of B1 using
=IF( SUMPRODUCT( ( MID(C1,ROW(OFFSET($A$1,,,LEN(C1))),1) = MID(C1,LEN(C1)-ROW(OFFSET($A$1,,,LEN(C1)))+1,1)) + 0 ) = LEN(C1), "It’s a Palindrome", "Nah!")
How does this formula work?
Well, that is your weekend homework. Go figure.
One more homework if you are game
If you feel like playing with words, here is another challenge.
How would you test if a cell contains alliteration?
(Alliteration here is defined as sentence where all words begin with same letter)
Go ahead and post your answers using comments.
Download Palindrome Test Excel Workbook
Click here to download the excel workbook and see the palindrome test formulas yourself.
Learn more about Excel Array Formulas
Array formulas are a special class of Excel formulas that can provide powerful results with little work. We have a huge collection of array formula examples on chandoo.org. Go thru below list and see how deep the rabit hole goes.
SUMPRODUCT Formula and how to use it
Advanced SUMPRODUCT Queries
Use Array Formulas to check if a list is sorted
Calculating sum of digits in a number using formulas
Check if a number is Prime using array formulas
More… Excel Array Formulas – Examples & Demos
PS: Monday is our (Indian) Independence Day. So I will see you again on Tuesday.
PPS: On Tuesday, we will be announcing our Excel Formula Crash Course. Get ready.
26 Responses to “FIFA Worldcup Excel Spreadsheets [Roundup]”
Nice roundup! Do you know of any one-page spreadsheets which will be updated by an administrator after each game? Would be nice to be able to print out the latest results whenever I feel like checking them as I probably won't be following closely every day.
I actually haven't tried any of the above ones yet, but I thought I'd mention this one that I found which makes a nice one-page form you can fill in dynamically. http://exceltemplate.net/sports/world-cup-2010-schedule-and-scoresheet/
I would like to recommend you these one: http://www.anotagol.com/
You can choose your interface language (english, spanish, italian, portuguese, german or french) and your country for the timezone of match. I like it very much.
An awesome online world cup calendar in flash.
http://www.marca.com/deporte/futbol/mundial/sudafrica-2010/calendario-english.html
Got one more tracker in excel (one page)
http://cid-b09e57e6e960505c.office.live.com/browse.aspx/.Public
[...] Passend zu gerade laufenden Fußball-WM gibt es auf Chandoo.org alles wissenswerte über Excel-Anwendungen für den Fußball-Fan. [...]
Great!!!
I strongly recommend this :
http://www.en.excel-soccer-2010.de/downloads
Chandoo how you found this ...
@Rohit.. really beautiful file. I missed it during my research. Now, I recommend it. 🙂
Hi Chandoo - thanks for the recommandation 🙂 - Regards
[...] Excel, then print it on the other side of your Match Schedule from step 2 above. There are several other Excel spreadsheet templates you can download, but this is probably the only one-page version you can find; plus, it [...]
Does anybody know how to re-create this(?): http://www.marca.com/deporte/futbol/mundial/sudafrica-2010/calendario-english.html
...or do you know where a template can be found? I am DYING to have something like this on my site. When I found it, I had been looking for the longest time for a circular calendar. I found a couple that weren't adequate. Then I stumbled upon this one and my eyes nearly popped out of my head. If anyone can lead me in the right direction, I would be eternally grateful!
Thanks in advance!
Robert
@Robert...
Doing something like that is a lot of work. You can probably get it done with some hired help from a flash developer.
@Robert, the World Cup flash in the Spanish Marca newspaper is impresive, but not much as my own animated spreadsheet with the Goals of 2010 World Cup South Africa in Excel that I just published into my blog:
http://pedrowave.blogspot.com/2010/06/goals-of-2010-world-cup-south-africa-in.html
Download from here:
http://cid-6b219f16da7128e3.office.live.com/view.aspx/.Public/Goals%20South%20Africa%20Animated.xlsx
And start to enter the goals of the rest of matches.
Has anyone seen, or made, a Spreadsheet where you can record the scorers and see a 'top scorers' chart. Would be a nice enhancement
@Neil... checkout this one http://www.inflexionary.com/sports/world-cup-2010-excel
it uses macros to fetch scores from web (and provides very comprehensive analysis too)
@All.. Thanks for the comments. I have updated the post with few more links now.
Hi,
Check this dashboards too:
http://dashboards.org/world-cup-dashboards-and-visualizations/
😉
[...] Here is a collection of FIFA World Cup Spreadsheets if you are more in to that sort of thing. | [...]
[...] Cup fever is here!In FIFA Worldcup Excel Spreadsheets Roundup, Chandoo has some links to useful World Cup tracking workbooks. Only one of them (the first one) [...]
[...] World Cup fever is here!In FIFA Worldcup Excel Spreadsheets Roundup, Chandoo has some links to useful World Cup tracking workbooks. Only one of them (the first one) [...]
Hey, you missed ours! It has everything you need and more, but not a whole pile of silly extras (National Anthems, etc). I'll be making another one for the 2014 world cup. We had over 4000 hits on it!
@Michael Harwood.
Where is it then? You should have posted a link
Sie sollten an einem Wettbewerb teil zu nehmen für einen der besten Blogs im Web. Ich werde empfehlen Sie diese Seite!
Google translation: You should take part in a contest for one of the best blogs on the web. I will recommend this site!
[...] and welcome to the forum, Maybe these similar spreadsheets might give you a few initial ideas: FIFA Worldcup Excel Spreadsheets [Roundup] | Chandoo.org - Learn Microsoft Excel Online If you have specific areas / formulae / layout choices for parts of your spreadsheet that you are [...]
Calling all football fans around the globe! The biggest football festival will kick off on the 12th June 2014 and everyone is placing their bets of who will have the honour of lifting the golden trophy.
Use our free interactive Excel templatel to predict the World cup finalists ! No macros !
http://www.spreadsheet1.com/world-cup-2014-free-excel-prediction-template.html
I also made a Worldcup-tracker, with MS Access, which can also generate reports in Excel
e.g. a match-schedule with locations on y-axis and dates on x-axis, see:
http://worktimesheet2014.blogspot.com.es/2014/05/excel-with-match-schedule-for-2014-fifa.html
and:
http://worktimesheet2014.blogspot.com.es/2014/05/match-access-app-to-track-world-cup.html
where can i find raw data in excel file format of fifa world cups (1930-2014)
@Vivek
Have a read of: http://chandoo.org/forum/threads/goal-of-world-cup.17637/
The location is mentioned in Somendra's comments
Free XLSX Prediction Spreadsheet for World Cup 2018 Russia!
https://www.spreadsheet1.com/fifa-world-cup-2018-russia-free-prediction-templates-for-excel.html