Hi All.
I am about to head off on holidays for a couple of weeks during which time I will only have limited internet access and won’t be helping out here at Chandoo.org or at the ExcelHero Academy whilst away.
I thought I may leave a few words and a Challenge for everyone.
History
In mid 2009 when Chandoo setup the forums I was an infrequent visitor to Chandoo.org. Chandoo had a neat way of writing his posts, not dissimilar to how I write which is personable and not text book style.
The first time I saw the forums there was about 20 unanswered posts, which I decided to see if I could tackle. When the forums were setup we used to get about 2 posts a week (on a busy week) and sometimes a week would go by with no posts.
Although I’ve used Excel for ages, I didn’t consider myself an expert by any measure. There were areas where I was very competent (Sumproduct & Data Tables) and I do consider myself very good at systems analysis, but I was no way an excel expert.
However I was surprised at my ability to answer most of the questions posted, and so would set myself a challenge to research and try and solve the posts that I couldn’t directly answer.
I will admit to being nervous when posting my first few responses.
– What if I make a fool of myself?
– What if the answer is wrong?
– What if my answers aren’t . . .
You get the idea.
What I found was exactly the opposite.
Most of my answers were close, and people would tell me when they weren’t right and we’d work on the problems together, even if it meant 40+ posts to solve an individual question.
People started appreciating the efforts I was providing and saying Thanks.
I realized that a lot of the problems weren’t actually Excel related, but more were data organization, data flow, problem analysis related, and I fitted into that slot easily.
Chandoo all of a sudden made me an Excel Ninja, which apart from the Free Gold plated Ninja Sword, Free Black Hood and Magical Powers, gave me the power to Edit my own posts and Delete others when they were rude/obnoxious etc.
But most of all I found my own Excel skills were developing quite rapidly and mostly into the areas I wasn’t familiar with.
This came about from not just answering the questions, but from the research into some of the harder ones. The research often took me to sites and into techniques and areas that I’d never seen or heard of and I was able to apply these to unanswered questions and work. I recently stumbled across a web page and was able to answer a post question which was 20 months old with what I had found.
Obviously since then I have written about 30 posts for Chandoo.org and have been allowed to run the site whilst Chandoo Holidays teaches Excel around the world.
Thank you
So firstly a thanks to Chandoo for giving me the opportunity and authority to post without censorship or review and to take care of his site from time to time, I’ve really enjoyed all of it.
I also want to thank the other users who regularly answer Forums posts, including our second Ninja Luke M as well as Vijay Sharma, Dan_L & Fred and all the others who answer posts, for assisting me in recent times.
YOUR TWO CHALLENGES
Challenge 1. Answer a Forum Post
To assist you in developing your excel skills, I won’t be answering any posts whilst on holidays, mostly because I will have limited internet access and won’t have access to Excel. Also when I get back from holidays, I’m going to stop answering Forum Posts until they are unanswered for 2 days.
My Challenge is for you to step in and fill the void.
Take the first step and try your hand at answering a few Forum posts.
Don’t be shy or ashamed of making a mistake. Your mistake will get picked and corrected and you and then many others will learn from it as well.
Start with simple posts you know or sort of know.
Give yourself a goal of say answering 1 post per week, or answering the next question on a specific topic. Read other answers and if they aren’t quite right or you can add to the story, do so, in a polite way of course.
Write as you would like people to speak to you.
Please be aware that we get posts from all languages and often the Poster’s translation into English isn’t perfect. Be patient.
Visit our forums & chip in today.
Challenge 2. Write a Post
If you have any specialty areas/skills or excel techniques why not try your hand at penning a post.
If you have developed a neat Dashboard or Report or anything else Excel that your proud of, why not try and write it up as a post so that other can learn from your skills.
Send any draft posts to either Chandoo or Myself in any format (Word or just plain text)
So I’m off on Holidays.
Take care of the forums whilst I’m away and good luck with the above challenges.
Hui…
PS: Please don’t post or rush to answer posts marked as URGENT, etc, Direct people to the Posting Rules & Etiquette Page.
Added by Chandoo:
How can I thank Hui for all he does. He is a great teacher, friend & supporter of our work here. He shows immense passion for helping people and teaching what he knows. I feel so fortunate to have known him. Wish you a kickass holiday Hui.
24 Responses
I’d suggest simply using the subtotal function and filtering the data using the Win/Loss column. You get the same results and the formula is more comprehensible.
@John
That is one option.
There are times however when you want to see the whole data table or a filtered subset and still want to produce summary reports against an unfiltered field.
Is there a particular reason why you are using a comma and the unary (–) operator for the second array in the SUMPRODUCT formula? It seems to work the same if you were to string the arrays together using the asterisk (*). The advantage is that SUMPRODUCT treats the entire string of arrays as a single array.
@Mathew
Your correct, There is no difference.
I thought it may have been easier to explain this method.
Is there a way to do this on a large set of data? As in ~100,000 rows? When I try I get an error because the formula becomes too long. It says the max length of a formula is 8,192 characters. Excel 2010.
How do I incorporate a specific text within a cell for the second array. For instance, – -(C7:C13=”Apple”)
when I chose a specific text the formula does not work.
@RB
I am not sure what is the issue as if I use the sample data in the post the following work fine
Count:
=SUMPRODUCT(SUBTOTAL(3,OFFSET(C7:C13,ROW(C7:C13)-MIN(ROW(C7:C13)),,1)), –(C7:C13=”L”))
Sum:
=SUMPRODUCT(SUBTOTAL(3,OFFSET(C7:C13,ROW(C7:C13)-MIN(ROW(C7:C13)),,1)),(C7:C13=”L”)*(D7:D13))
You may want to check that there are no leading or trailing spaces in your list of Apples
I should have given a better explanation. Heres my situation. I have a column with cells filled with names like Column 1, Column 2, Pier 1, Pier 2, etc. If the cell just contained Pier and searched for that it works. But because it has other characters in the cell its not recognizing the pier. So how can I extract specific characters of a string of text in this formula?
Hopefully this was a better explanation
Hello-
This formula works pretty well for me except that it slow down excel and prevents some of my macros from working. I was wondering if there was a way to program this in VBA so that excel isn’t always trying to recalculate it. I would like to use a push of a button to get it to run then paste in a cell.
Thanks!
I am trying to sum filtered data in a column, but would want to ignore the negative values in the column. How to go about doing this?
@Akshay
Why not just add a filter to that column to only show the values greater than zero?
The negative values are required for reporting purposes, but their effect on the total is distorting the required output. Please advise.
@Akshay
I’d suggest making a post in the Chandoo.org Forums
http://forum.chandoo.org/
Attach a sample file to simplify the task
I have this working for counting and summing, however, I have a list and for the second array, I need a criteria. That is, I’m looking for b13:b200=”01.??.??” or =left((a1,2) or something like that. These types of criteria matches do not appear to work as I get a blank as a result.
Thanks!
@Bob
As your formula b13:b200=”01.??.??” looks like you are trying to check the first day of the month of the range
What about trying Day(B13:B200)=1
Hai Experts,
i understood this formula well and working fine in MS Excel 2013
but when the same am trying to place in google Spreadsheet it shows error as
“SUMPRODUCT has mismatched range sizes. Expected row count: 1. column count: 1. Actual row count: 2014, column count: 1.” and as a result #VALUE! Appears in cell.
Can anyone please help me how would i get it done in Google Spread sheet
or is there any other formula as a substitute for this.
Thank you very much.
thanks for providing this.. but why does excel keeps on prompting Circular referencing in cell D3?
@Vivek
I don’t know
I just downloaded the file and it is working fine and not showing that error
Goto the Formulas, Calculation Options Tab and check that Calculation is set to Automatic
What version of Excel and Windows are you using ?
I know that this forum is for MS Excel, but I am trying to help someone who is working in Google Sheets. The below formula works in Excel but Google Sheets returns:
“SUMPRODUCT has mismatched range sizes. Expected row count: 1. column count: 1. Actual row count: 39000, column count: 1.” and as a result #VALUE! Appears in cell.
This is the same problem asked by Srichirin above. Does anyone know if there is a formula for Google Sheets that will replicate what MS Excel does?
=SUMPRODUCT(SUBTOTAL(3,OFFSET($C$6:$C$39500,ROW($C$6:$C$39500)-MIN(ROW($C$6:$C$39500)),,1)),- -($C$6:$C$39500=H1),($D$6:$D$39500))
Trying to find a SUMPRODUCT formula that counts the word Closed by date for the last 7 days in a filtered list.
=COUNTIF(M:M,”>”&TODAY()-7) works ok for unfiltered count Column M contains Closure dates (blank if open) and Column L is Status Open or Closed
@ Terry
Please ask the question at the Chandoo.org Forums
https://chandoo.org/forum/
Please attach a sample file to ensure a quicker more accurate answer
I used this formula and worked like a charm! But, now I’ve been requested to use it but adding not one but two criteria in the same formula. For instance the sum I was doing added negative and positive numbers. I’ve been asked to use the exact same formula but adding that only positive numbers were considered… any idea on how to do this?
How exactly do you do sum filtered cells when two criteria are need not just one?
Thank you so much brother literally I have been struggling since morning to get the sum of the filtered category, however, after reading your blog attentively i got my solution, so thanks a lot once again.