Today, let’s travel in time. Pack your photon ray guns, extra underwear, buckle your seat belts and open Excel!
Of course, we are not going to travel in time. (Come to think of it, we are going to travel in time. By the time you finish reading this, you would have traveled a few minutes)
We are going to learn how to travel in time when using Excel. In simple terms, you are going to learn how to move forward or backward in time using Excel formulas.
So are you ready to hit the warp speed? Let’s beam up our Excel time machine.
Tip 0 – Date & Time are an illusion
Most important tip for Excel time travelers is to understand that Excel dates & times are just numbers. So when you see a date like 17-October-2013 in a cell, you can safely assume that it is a number disguised to look like 17th of October, 2013. To see the number behind this, just select the cell and format it as number (from Home ribbon).
Now that you understood this concept, let’s jump in to the 42 tips. All these tips assume a date or time value is in the cell A1.
Staying at present:
- To have latest star date in a cell, just press CTRL+; (of course, in Excel world, star date is nothing but whatever date your computer shows)
- To have current time in a cell, just press CTRL+:
- Of course, we time travelers are lazy. So pressing CTRL+; every day or CTRL+: every second is not cool. That is why you can use =TODAY() in a cell to get today’s date. It will automatically change when you re-open the file tomorrow.
- Likewise, use =NOW() to get current date & time in a cell. Remember, although time changes every second, you will not see the cell updated unless the formula is somehow re-calculated. This is done by,
- Pressing F9
- Saving / re-opening the file
- Making any changes to any cell (like typing a value, changing a value)
- Editing the formula cell and pressing Enter
- To check if today is after or before the date in cell A1, you can use =TODAY() > A1. This will be TRUE if A1 has a past date and FALSE if A1 has a future date.
- To know how many days are there between TODAY and the date in A1, use =TODAY() – A1. This will be a negative number if A1 is a future date. To see just the number of days (without negative sign), you can use =ABS(TODAY()-A1)
- To know how many hours are left between the time in A1 and current time, use =(NOW()-A1)*24.
- While the above formula works, it shows hours and fraction. To just see hours and minutes left, you can use =TEXT((NOW()-A1), “[hh]:mm”). Note: This formula works only when A1 < NOW().
- To know how many weeks are left between TODAY() date and a future date in A1, use =(TODAY() –
A1)/7 - To know how many months are left between TODAY() and date in A1, use = DATEDIF(TODAY(), A1, “m”).
Related: How to use DATEDIF function. - To know which month is running, use =MONTH(TODAY())
- To see the month name instead of number, use =TEXT(TODAY(), “MMMM”). This shows the month’s name in your Excel language.
- To know which year is running, use =YEAR(TODAY())
- To see the last 2 digits of the year, you can use =RIGHT(YEAR(TODAY()), 2)
- To find the day of week for TODAY, use =WEEKDAY(TODAY()). This will give a number (1 to 7, 1 for Sunday, 7 for Saturday).
- To see the weekday name instead of number, use =TEXT(TODAY(), “DDDD”).
- To see today’s date alone, use =DAY(TODAY())
- To know if the present year is a leap year or not, see this.
Going back in time
- To go back by 6 days from the date in A1, use =A1-6
- To go back to last Friday use =A1-WEEKDAY(A1, 16). This works in Excel 2010, 2013. If your time machine is old (ie you have Excel 2003 or earlier versions), you can use =A1-CHOOSE(WEEKDAY(A1), 2,3,4,5,6,7,1)
- To go back by 5 weeks, use =A1-5*7
- To go back to start of the month, use =DATE(YEAR(A1), MONTH(A1),1)
- To go back to end of previous month, use = DATE(YEAR(A1), MONTH(A1),1) – 1
- Or use =EOMONTH(A1,-1)
- To go back by 2 months, use =EDATE(A1, -2)
- To go back by 27 working days, use =WORKDAY(A1, -27). This assumes, Monday to Friday as working days.
- To go back by 27 working days, assuming you follow Monday to Friday work week and a set of extra holidays, use =WORKDAY(A1, -27, LIST_OF_HOLIDAYS)
- To go back by 7 quarters, use =EDATE(A1, -7 * 3)
- To go back to the start of the year, =DATE(YEAR(A1), 1,1)
- To go back to same date last year, = DATE(YEAR(A1)-1, MONTH(A1), DAY(A1))
- To go back a decade, =DATE(YEAR(A1)-10, MONTH(A1), DAY(A1))
Going forward in time
We, time travelers are smart people. Once you know that turning the knob backwards takes you to past, you know how to go to future. So I am giving very few examples for going forward in time.
- To go to the 17th working day from date A1, assuming you use Sunday to Thursday workweek, use =WORKDAY.INTL(A1,17,7). This formula works in Excel 2010 or above.
- To go to next hour, use=A1+1/24
- To go to next day morning 9AM, use =INT(A1+1) + 9/24
- To go to 18th of next month, use =DATE(YEAR(A1), MONTH(A1)+1, 18)
- To go to end of the current quarter for date in A1, use =DATE(YEAR(A1), CHOOSE(MONTH(A1), 4,4,4,7,7,7,10,10,10,13,13,13),1)-1
- To go to a future date that is 4 years, 6 months, 7 days away from A1, use =DATE(YEAR(A1)+4, MONTH(A1)+6, DAY(A1)+7)
Finding the amount of time traveled
- To know how many days are between 2 dates (in A1 & A2), use =A1-A2
- To know how many working days are between 2 dates, use =NETWORKDAYS(A1, A2) (remember: A1 should be less than A2).
Fixes for common time travel hiccups
- If you see ###### instead of a date in a cell, try making the column wider. If you still see ######, that means the date value is not understandable by Excel (negative numbers, dates prior to 1st of January 1900 etc.)
- Often when pasting date values in to Excel, you notice that they are not treated as dates. Use these techniques to fix.
- If you pass in-correct values or use wrong parameters, your date formulas show an error like #NUM or #VALUE. Read this to understand how to fix such errors.
Quiz time for time travelers
I see that you safely made it here. I hope you had a good journey. Let me see how good your time traveling is. Answer these questions:
- Write a formula to take date in A1 to next month’s first Monday.
- Given a date in A1, find out the closest Christmas date to it.
Building your own time machine? Check out these tips too
If you work with date & time values often, then learning about them certainly pays off. Read below articles to one up your time travel awesomeness.
- Using Date & Time in Excel
- How to calculate common holiday dates in Excel?
- How to calculate payroll dates?
- How to sort a bunch of birth dates by birthday?
- Check if two dates are in same month
Good luck time traveling. I will see you again in future 🙂
PS: Make sure you attempt the challenges and post your answers in comments.
30 Responses to “Rescue oddly shaped data – Battle between Formulas, VBA and Power Query”
Nice use of Power Query! Power Query is simply awesome! But somehow a lot of people are punishing themselves by not using it (not learning it).
An imperfect 4th approach for consideration... no codes at all...
Select myrange.
Go to Special --> Blank
Delete Cell --> Shift cell left
90% done... now we just need to move the data of 2nd column to the bottom of 1st column
Of course... Power Query is the best.
Cheers,
There is another way but it involves multiple steps:
Copy the values in column E, move the cursor to F5, Paste Special with Skip Blanks, OK
Copy the values in column D, move the cursor to F8, Paste Special with Skip Blanks, OK
And so on.
This works perfectly, albeit a little clumsily apart from the values in B17 and C16, which can be moved with simple copy and paste
Power Query Forever! I do not know how I survived for so long without knowing and using this tool, I can not recommend it to my colleagues, but by the way they prefer to suffer to learn.
My congratulations here from Brazil.
I rolled my eyes when I saw that data
Using decimal places is a nice trick to order data, thanks for that
And tweaking the first formula a bit, you can use OFFSET instead of INDIRECT
=OFFSET($A$1, MIN(IF(myrange, ROW(myrange)), ROWS(A$1:A1))-1, RIGHT(TEXT(MIN(IF(myrange, ROW(myrange) + COLUMN(myrange)*0.00001), ROWS(A$1:A1)), ".00000"), 5)-1)
Tried the above formula with the downloaded oddly shaped data file and I could not get it to work. I get #value without ctrl+shift+enter, and #ref with ctrl+shift+enter.
Sorry, it was SMALL, not MIN.
Add with CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER.
Thank you for your formula. Like the indirect formula I tested this one in older versions of EXCEL and it worked without ALTERATION in EXCEL 95. Very impressive.
Too complicated
Use =Sum to summarize all the sells to the left and Bobs Your Uncle
@Bertie... I am afraid that won't work when you have more than one value in a row.
I tested this formula in versions of Excel all the way back to Excel 95
=IF(ISERROR(INDIRECT("R"&SUBSTITUTE(TEXT(SMALL(IF(MyRange"",ROW(MyRange)+COLUMN(MyRange)*0.00001),ROWS(A$1:A9)),"00000.00000"),".","C"),FALSE)),"",(INDIRECT("R"&SUBSTITUTE(TEXT(SMALL(IF(MyRange"",ROW(MyRange)+COLUMN(MyRange)*0.00001),ROWS(A$1:A9)),"00000.00000"),".","C"),FALSE)))
So there are multiple ways of cleaning up messy data by formulas.
Wow.. Excel 95. Who knew people still use that. But as you have shown, Excel has all these beautiful and powerful functions for 23 years. It has data sciency stuff before DS was even a thing.
I had a problem with pasting the formula in the original post.
Formula should be: =IF(ISERROR(INDIRECT("R"&SUBSTITUTE(TEXT(SMALL(IF(myrange"",ROW(myrange)+COLUMN(myrange)*0.00001),ROWS(A$1:A1)),"00000.00000"),".","C"),FALSE)),"",(INDIRECT("R"&SUBSTITUTE(TEXT(SMALL(IF(myrange"",ROW(myrange)+COLUMN(myrange)*0.00001),ROWS(A$1:A1)),"00000.00000"),".","C"),FALSE)))
EXCEL even in a 16 bit version, is a very robust and capable program.
I don't like the VBA code. If you have a blank row in MyRange, the last entry in the range is doubled up in the paste.here range.
Not really. The macro is writing one cell at a time from paste.here. You have to clean the range before, which I was too lazy to write. But a line like Range(range("paste.here"), range("paste.here").end(xldown)).clearcontents should do the trick.
Adding Range(range("paste.here"), range("paste.here").end(xldown)).clearcontents fixed the problem.
for step split column by delimiter i am not getting option of split into rows or columns. Can you help me in this
Thanks Chandoo for promoting Power Query.
To simplify further, you can "Unpivot Columns" instead of right click on the newly created column and split it by comma in to rows in step 3 of Power Query.
i used
=LOOKUP(10000,B5:F5)
and got the answers. I just plagiarized this formula somewhere and use it, maybe you can explain why it works.
Regards
@Johan... I am not sure if the formula works correctly. When I tested it with the sample data in this post, it showed #N/As in two cells. Essentially, it will only give first value in each row. So if a row has multiple values, then subsequent values are missed. LOOKUP() function goes thru a list and finds the first value that is less than or equal to the input - in this case 10000 in B5:F5.
I have the need to convert pdf's to excel on occasion and they often come out a mess like this. I have used:
Cell G2 =COUNT(myrange)
Cell G3 =IFERROR(IF(G2-1<1,"",G2-1),"") copied down to G100
Cell H2 =IFERROR(LARGE(myrange,G2),"") copied down to H100
Waouw...
=IFERROR(INDIRECT("R" & SUBSTITUTE(TEXT(SMALL(IF(myrange "", ROW(myrange) + COLUMN(myrange)*0.00001),
ROWS(A$1:A1)), "00000.00000"), ".", "C"), FALSE), "")
but CTRL Shift Enter with {} before and after 🙂 😀
Here's a way with pivot table
https://www.bookkempt.com/2018/02/aligning-non-contiguous-data.html
This is brilliant. Bookmarked 🙂
Another possibility.
This assumes that you have a row index 'k' to use in the SMALL function and a column index 'h' to identify the columns of 'myRange'.
If you define 'coord' to refer to
=k+h/10 [assuming h<10]
then it will be possible to recover values later based upon location within 'myRange'. The formula 'nb' that identifies non-blanks by coordinates is given by
= SMALL( IF(myRange"", coord), k )
Finally, to unpick the pieces
= INDEX( myRange, INT(nb), 10*MOD(nb, 1) )
Whilst I am here and making trouble the PQ solution is also a tad over-complicated. All that is needed is to unpivot the entire table and remove the Attribute column.
The advanced editor would show
let
Source = Excel.CurrentWorkbook(){[Name="myRange"]}[Content],
#"Unpivoted Columns" = Table.UnpivotOtherColumns(Source, {}, "Attribute", "Value"),
#"Removed Columns" = Table.RemoveColumns(#"Unpivoted Columns",{"Attribute"})
in
#"Removed Columns"
1.fill the blank cells with 0
2.the requested column value=sum of those mess number column
but this can be used in only one column has value
Chandoo
And if we use the formula SEARCH (100000000, B5: F5)
JC
Another approach with Power Query, it will still work if the number of columns changed:
let
Source = Excel.CurrentWorkbook(){[Name="myrange"]}[Content],
#"Added Custom" = Table.AddColumn(Source, "List", each Record.ToList(_)),
#"Removed Other Columns" = Table.SelectColumns(#"Added Custom",{"List"}),
#"Expanded LIst" = Table.ExpandListColumn(#"Removed Other Columns", "List"),
#"Filtered Rows" = Table.SelectRows(#"Expanded LIst", each ([List] null))
in
#"Filtered Rows"
Cool idea to use Record.ToList as added column. Thanks for sharing this.
Nowadays, you can just use TOCOL on Excel 2024, MS 365, and Web Excel. It has a parameter to ignore blanks/errors/both.