This week in Formula Forensics we’ll look at, Zebra Stripes and Checker-board Conditional Formatting.
This idea is inspired by a number of posts over the past few years asking about zebra stripes but specifically BobR who in in June 2011, also asked about Checkerboards in the post: Want to be an excel conditional-formatting Rock Star, Comment No. 154.
I got the conditional format for alternating row and column colors,
Is there a conditional format to make it a checkerboard whereas the cell A2 will remove either the conditional for the row or column and then alternately to A4, B1, B3 etc?
Chandoo responded fairly quickly with this Conditional Formatting formula:
=IF(MOD(ROW(),2)=1,MOD((ROW()-1)*8+COLUMN(),2)=0,MOD((ROW()-1)*8+COLUMN(),2)=1)
Unbeknownst to Chandoo I posted this about a minute later:
=ISODD(ROW()+COLUMN())
Both formula correctly answer BobR’s question.
So today we’re going to pull apart Zebra Stripes and Checker Boards and see what makes them tick.
As always you can follow along in a download file here: Download File.
ZEBRA STRIPES
Zebra Stripes as Conditional Formatting is simply applied using a simple formula within Conditional Formatting.
=MOD(ROW(),2)=0
Conditional Formatting requires a formula that returns a boolean “True” to apply a format or a Boolean “False” to not Apply a format.
So the formula is better read as: If MOD(ROW(),2)=0
And If MOD(ROW(),2)=0, the formula will evaluate as True
This is best evaluated as 3 columns on a worksheet.
In cells
B5:B10 The formula =Row() returns the Row Number
C5:C10 The formula =Mod(Row() ,2) returns the Mod of Row Number, divided by 2
The Mod function returns the remainder of the division of the Row Number divided by 2,
So in Row 5, Mod(Row(),2) = Mod(5, 2) = 5/2 = 2 Remainder 1 = 1
and in Row 6, Mod(Row(),2) = Mod(6, 2) = 6/2 = 3 Remainder 0 = 0
D5:D10 The formula =Mod(Row() ,2)=0 checks the remainder against the value 0
This is what evaluates to either True or False depending on the Row number.
Where the Values are True the Format will be applied (Even Rows)
The Conditional Formatting can be applied to Odd Rows If the Formula is slightly altered
=Mod(Row() ,2)=1
Similarly the formatting can be applied to Columns using
=MOD(COLUMN(),2)=0/1
CHECKER BOARDS
RobR received two responses to his Checker-Board Conditional Formatting request.
=IF(MOD(ROW(),2)=1,MOD((ROW()-1)*8+COLUMN(),2)=0,MOD((ROW()-1)*8+COLUMN(),2)=1)
and
=ISODD(ROW()+COLUMN())
Lest see what’s inside these two formula.
=IF(MOD(ROW(),2)=1,MOD((ROW()-1)*8+COLUMN(),2) =0, MOD( (ROW() -1)*8+COLUMN(),2)=1)
This is a simple If Formula with 3 components
=IF(MOD(ROW(),2)=1,MOD((ROW()-1)*8+COLUMN(),2)=0,MOD((ROW()-1)*8+COLUMN(),2)=1)
If Condition MOD(ROW(),2)=1
Value if True: MOD((ROW()-1)*8+COLUMN(),2)=0
Value if False: MOD((ROW()-1)*8+COLUMN(),2)=1
The If Condition is already known to us, as it’s the same formula used in the Zebra Stripes above.
It evaluates to True when it is on an Odd Row.
So when it is an Odd numbered Row Excel will look at MOD((ROW()-1)*8+COLUMN(),2)=0
And when it is an Even numbered Row Excel will look at MOD((ROW()-1)*8+COLUMN(),2)=1
We can notice that these are the same formulas which have a different ending of =0 and =1
MOD((ROW()-1)*8+COLUMN(),2)=0
This section Takes each Row subtracts 1 and then multiplies this number by 8. This can be expressed as simply as saying multiply the Row * 8.
This will always return an Even Number and could have been simplified to Row()*2
MOD((ROW()-1)*8+COLUMN(),2)=0
The next bit adds the column number to the previous Even Number.
So now this part will be Odd when the column is Odd and Even when the column is Even.
MOD((ROW()-1)*8+COLUMN(),2)=0
The remainder of the formula is the same as the Zebra Stripes formula.
An Odd Number (Odd Columns) in the section above will return a 1 as the result of =Mod(Odd,2)
An Even Number (Even Columns) in the section above will return a 0 as the result of =Mod(Odd,2)
When evaluated against 0 will return True for Even Columns and False for Odd Columns.
Now the exact same happens in the False section of the If formula except that it is evaluated against 1.
=ISODD(ROW()+COLUMN())
I tackled this problem from a different direction to Chandoo.
Knowing that Even + Even = Even and Even + Odd = Odd and that the row and Column Numbers increase in each direction by 1 each Row/Column, it was simply a matter of adding the Row and Column numbers together and checking if it was Odd or Even
The Excel function IsOdd() and IsEven() both return a Boolean “True” if the contents are Odd or “Even” respectively. This negates an external truth check as described above.
This is easily shown by adding a formula to the Checker area
=Row()+Column()
Excel 2003: The above formula won’t work in Excel 2003.
Try this instead =Mod(Row()+Column(),2)=1
If the alternate shading is required a switch to
=ISEVEN(ROW()+COLUMN())
Does the trick.
Excel 2003: The above formula won’t work in Excel 2003.
Try this instead =Mod(Row()+Column(),2)=0
Learn More About Conditional Formatting Here:
http://chandoo.org/wp/2009/03/13/excel-conditional-formatting-basics/
and
http://chandoo.org/wp/2008/03/13/want-to-be-an-excel-conditional-formatting-rock-star-read-this/
and
http://chandoo.org/wp/2008/10/14/more-than-3-conditional-formats-in-excel/
DOWNLOAD
You can download a copy of the above file and follow along, Download Here.
OTHER POSTS IN THIS SERIES
You can learn more about how to pull Excel Formulas apart in the following posts
Formula Forensics 001 – Tarun’s Problem
Formula Forensics 002 – Joyce’s Question
Formula Forensics 003 – Lukes Reward
Formula Forensics 004 – Freds Problem
We Need Your Help !
If you have a neat formula that you would like to share and explain, try putting pen to paper and draft up a Post as Luke did in Formula Forensics 003. or this post.
If you have a formula that you don’t understand and would like explained but don’t want to write a post also send it in to Chandoo or Hui.
25 Responses to “Shift Calendar Template – FREE Download”
Hi Chandoo,
your recent postings include only Excel 2007 templates. Unfortunately the company I work at still runs Excel 2003. Is it possible to get your awesome files in other excel version as well?
Thanks so much for your great excel stuff!
Is it possible to do this for shifts with hours instead of days? To organise a three shift day?
Thanks in advance,
Stelios
In my organization there are 45 employees i need split then into three shifts ex:A shift:14,B shift:14,C shift:14 and week off:3 kindly help me on this.
@Masthan
You need to understand what rules your company has for the various shifts / roster combinations
Chandoo, I once did a shift control spreadsheet for my team. I put one person in each line, the columns were the days. I put a shift code in each cell indicating in which shift that person should work, or if the person were out that day. I have two codes for being out. One is for vacations and one is to compensate days worked in weekends. This way I was able to count how many persons I have in each shift, how many were on vacations and how many were out compensating (that's the term we use here) weekend worked hours.
Later I included the possibility of a person be in two lines one for normal hours other for overtime. This is mainly used for planning purposes. If you would like I can send you an example. The only problem of this spreadsheet is that we don't have a person view, only this consolidated view.
Hi George, I would like to have a copy of your spreadsheet if you can share it.
Thanks in advance, Chuck
Hi Chandoo,
Where is the code located ? is it VBA ? If so , how do you hide it ? Or it is .NET ?
Thx
@Idan
.
No VBA or code, it is all done with Mirrors.
Only Joking,
.
But there is no VBA or code,
It is all done with Named Formulas and Lookups.
Have alook at the cells in the calander area and Named Formulas in the Formulas, Name Manager Tab.
How can i calculate between two or more different workbooks? Please, reply me as early as possible.
@Anand
Open the workbooks you want to link to
Start a formula = and click and change between workbooks as required.
You can use the View, Switch window menu to change workbooks mid formula
The format for using workbooks is
=[Workbook.xlsm]Sheet1!$A$1
or
=SUM('[Book2.xls]Sheet1'!$A$1:$D$10)
etc
Hi Chandoo,
I am working with a call centre wherein i ned to update at the month end 20 to 30 employees login hours which are defict to track it at the month end is very difficult is there any template which can be made to track that why on a particular day a guy who needs to be on calls was why not on calls.
Thank you so much Chandoo. This is really helping me. As usual, you rock.
What's FortyTwoDays and Calendar in Name manager?
Both are unused and FortyTwoDays doesn't make any sense.
I have a SQL db that contains records of events scheduled/completed on a particular date. Can this method ous building a calendar be used to display those events on the respective day?
Positively awesome!
I'm attempting to help a friend create a schedule for adult classes - and of course its not"paid help". Here is the scenario:
20 classes, instructor, room#, student class size, start date, number of class days (need to subtract weekends)
class
instructor
room
students
start
#days
PATH
karen
201
21
01/01/13
11
BILLING
jane
401
15
01/12/13
13
MEDISOFT
mike
301
11
01/25/13
9
he'd like to see these classes show up in different colors within the same month's calendar chart. He can draw it, but I'd like to see it done automatically through data, and I just can't visualize it, but I KNOW this will work - can you help?
Jan 🙂
Dear chandoo,
Try many way to download still can't access. Any way we want to try out 3 shifts with 3 guys in a group .eg Group A Morn, Group B Night and Group C Rest. And every each group must work on sunday to take turns. In fact we are security teams so that's why sunday is required to work. Pls guide and show how to put in the working calendar. Thank you in advance.
I've been trying to copy and/or recreate this to use in a workbook I'm doing for the transportation department I'm working for. I need to have the calendar on the first sheet in my document (it has graph's from data on another sheet). I'm trying to use it to track (with the conditional formatting) accidents and injuries. I've redone the conditional formatting to do 4 different accident types (no injury, near miss, OSHA recordable injury and work loss injury), but when I enter the formula's you have in the calendar portion where it says "DateOfFirst-FirstWeekDay" I can't figure out how you did that. Are you able to help?
I would like to use Excel to solve the following problem for a community work. I want to create a Driver schedule for a given month from a pool of volunteers for a community service. Each of these volunteers can drive only on specific days in a week. I would like to populate the driving schedule for each weekday with primary, secondary and tertiary drivers in a random fashion so that I do not overburden one person. I would greatly any help you can provide.
Hi chandoo,
Thanks for your valuable effort for create this template and let me know how to add multiple employees in the the Roaster.
Hi Chandoo,
This article on shift roaster is very helpful. Could you please let me know how i can use the same for n number of resources who work 24/7, considering their leaves and holidays?
Thanks,
Savitha
Hi Chandoo,
This article on shift roaster is very helpful to all. Could you please let me know how i can use the same if I want to add for some more shifts, since the color is not getting change if I add more shifts like 4,5 etc.,
Thanks,
Murali
nice post
How can I change the date to 2017 under Shift Data worksheet.
solution 1:
mydata=B2:C16
stoplist=E2:E8
=LET(RNG,A2:A16,SMR,C2:C16, F,(RNG=E2)+(RNG=E3)+(RNG=E4)+(RNG=E5)+(RNG=E6)+(RNG=E7)+(RNG=E8),SUM(SMR)-SUM(SMR*F))
=LET(RNG,A2:A16,SMR,C2:C16,RH,N(B2:B16=B2), F,(RNG=E2)+(RNG=E3)+(RNG=E4)+(RNG=E5)+(RNG=E6)+(RNG=E7)+(RNG=E8),TOT,SUM(SMR)-SUM(SMR*RH*F),SUM(SMR*RH)-SUM(SMR* RH*F))
ALTERNATE SOLUTION
=SUM(C2:C16)-SUM(FILTER(C2:C16,ISNUMBER(BYROW(A2:A16,LAMBDA(a,TOROW(SEARCH(a,E2:E8),2))))))
=SUM((B2:B16=B2)*(C2:C16))-SUM((ISNUMBER(BYROW(A2:A16,LAMBDA(a,TOROW(SEARCH(a,E2:E8),2))))*(B2:B16=B2)*(C2:C16)))
let
Source = Excel.CurrentWorkbook(){[Name="Table1"]}[Content],
#"Replaced Value" = Table.ReplaceValue(Source,null,";",Replacer.ReplaceValue,{"Column1"}),
#"Transposed Table" = Table.Transpose(#"Replaced Value"),
#"Removed Other Columns" = Table.SelectColumns(#"Transposed Table",{"Column1", "Column2", "Column3", "Column4", "Column5", "Column6", "Column7", "Column8", "Column9", "Column10", "Column11", "Column12", "Column13", "Column14", "Column15", "Column16", "Column17", "Column18", "Column19", "Column20", "Column21", "Column22", "Column23", "Column24", "Column25", "Column26", "Column27", "Column28", "Column29", "Column30", "Column31", "Column32", "Column33", "Column34", "Column35", "Column36", "Column37", "Column38", "Column39", "Column40", "Column41", "Column42", "Column43", "Column44", "Column45", "Column46", "Column47", "Column48", "Column49", "Column50", "Column51", "Column52", "Column53", "Column54", "Column55", "Column56", "Column57", "Column58", "Column59", "Column60", "Column61", "Column62", "Column63", "Column64", "Column65", "Column66", "Column67", "Column68", "Column69", "Column70", "Column71", "Column72", "Column73", "Column74", "Column75", "Column76", "Column77", "Column78", "Column79", "Column80", "Column81", "Column82", "Column83", "Column84", "Column85", "Column86", "Column87"}),
#"Merged Columns" = Table.CombineColumns(#"Removed Other Columns",{"Column1", "Column2", "Column3", "Column4", "Column5", "Column6", "Column7", "Column8", "Column9", "Column10", "Column11", "Column12", "Column13", "Column14", "Column15", "Column16", "Column17", "Column18", "Column19", "Column20", "Column21", "Column22", "Column23", "Column24", "Column25", "Column26", "Column27", "Column28", "Column29", "Column30", "Column31", "Column32", "Column33", "Column34", "Column35", "Column36", "Column37", "Column38", "Column39", "Column40", "Column41", "Column42", "Column43", "Column44", "Column45", "Column46", "Column47", "Column48", "Column49", "Column50", "Column51", "Column52", "Column53", "Column54", "Column55", "Column56", "Column57", "Column58", "Column59", "Column60", "Column61", "Column62", "Column63", "Column64", "Column65", "Column66", "Column67", "Column68", "Column69", "Column70", "Column71", "Column72", "Column73", "Column74", "Column75", "Column76", "Column77", "Column78", "Column79", "Column80", "Column81", "Column82", "Column83", "Column84", "Column85", "Column86", "Column87"},Combiner.CombineTextByDelimiter("|", QuoteStyle.None),"Merged"),
#"Split Column by Delimiter" = Table.ExpandListColumn(Table.TransformColumns(#"Merged Columns", {{"Merged", Splitter.SplitTextByDelimiter(";", QuoteStyle.Csv), let itemType = (type nullable text) meta [Serialized.Text = true] in type {itemType}}}), "Merged"),
#"Added Prefix" = Table.TransformColumns(#"Split Column by Delimiter", {{"Merged", each "|" & _, type text}}),
#"Replaced Value1" = Table.ReplaceValue(#"Added Prefix","||","|",Replacer.ReplaceText,{"Merged"}),
#"Split Column by Delimiter1" = Table.SplitColumn(#"Replaced Value1", "Merged", Splitter.SplitTextByDelimiter("|", QuoteStyle.Csv), {"Merged.1", "Merged.2", "Merged.3", "Merged.4", "Merged.5", "Merged.6", "Merged.7", "Merged.8"}),
#"Removed Columns" = Table.RemoveColumns(#"Split Column by Delimiter1",{"Merged.1"}),
#"Removed Duplicates" = Table.Distinct(#"Removed Columns")
in
#"Removed Duplicates"