Lets test your Excel skills. Can you write a formula to check few cells are equal?
Your homework:
- Let us say you have four values in cells A1, A2, A3, A4
- Write a formula to check if all 4 cells have same value (ie A1=A2=A3=A4)
- Your output can be TRUE/FALSE or 1/0 to indicate a match (or mis-match)
Bonus question 1:
How would you write a formula if your values are in range A1:An
Bonus question 2:
What formula would work well if the cells contain non-numeric values (text, logical etc.)
Obvious answer:
The easiest and obvious answer is to test if all them are equal. The formula is,
=AND(A1=A2,A1=A3,A1=A4)
(select the above blank line to see answer)
But can you come up with some other options to test the equality?
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