Yesterday, I talked about how you don’t have to know how to code in order to highly leverage VBA. All you need to know is how to Google, Cut, and Paste. As discussed then, I ‘volunteered’ KV under pain of exposure to empty the contents of his secret satchel onto the virtual table, so that we can rummage through it. So without further ado, please put your hands together and give a warm Chandoo welcome to secret agent KV.
[Secret transmission starts…]
Hello, this is my first guest post on Chandoo.org (or any Excel website for that matter), and I will try to keep it simple, but useful for our readers.
I have been using spreadsheets since 1990, and Excel since 1995 – which sort of makes me a veteran in this sphere of business applications 🙂
One of my favorite topics in Excel is – “How can I make my day-to-day tasks in Excel easier and faster ?”. In fact, this is a topic that I think about in everything to do with computers.
There are many ways one can do this in Excel, but among the more effective and scalable ones, is storing commonly used macros in your Personal Macro Workbook.
This post is about some of the stuff that I have put in my Personal Macro Workbook over the years. You can read more about how to set up a Personal Macro Workbook, in this excellent tutorial on Ron de Bruin’s website. Like nuclear war, It’s a one-time exercise. And you can easily port it to any other computers that you use – or even share it with your friends and allied spooks.
This is the first bunch of macros which I use most frequently. Hopefully I will get a chance to post some more if this post is found to be good enough 🙂
So here goes.
1: Find the value of ActiveCell within selection, or in the whole sheet
This is a very useful macro which helps to search for the value in the ActiveCell within the selected range or the whole worksheet (if only ActiveCell is selected).
Sub SearchOnActiveCellContents()
' Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+G
On Error GoTo NotFound
If Selection.Cells.Count > 1 Then
Selection.Cells.Find _
(What:=ActiveCell.Value, After:=ActiveCell, LookIn:=xlValues, _
LookAt:=xlPart, SearchOrder:=xlByRows, SearchDirection:=xlNext, _
MatchCase:=False, SearchFormat:=False).Activate
Else
Cells.Find _
(What:=ActiveCell.Value, After:=ActiveCell, LookIn:=xlValues, _
LookAt:=xlPart, SearchOrder:=xlByRows, SearchDirection:=xlNext, _
MatchCase:=False, SearchFormat:=False).Activate
End If
Exit Sub
NotFound:
MsgBox "No cells found with this cell's contents"
End Sub
As you will notice, the macro checks whether the selection is 1 cell or multiple cells, and accordingly executes the Cells.Find command.
2: Filter on value NOT equal to ActiveCell value
This is another handy macro, which filters the current column based on the value of the active cell, except that the filter is applied as “show records NOT equal to the value of the active cell”
The macro itself is a fairly simple one-line command :
Sub AutoFilterSelectionNOT()
' Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+K
Dim lField As Long
lField = ActiveCell.Column - ActiveCell.CurrentRegion.Column + 1
If TypeName(Selection) <> "Range" Then Exit Sub
Selection.AutoFilter Field:=lField, Criteria1:="<>" & ActiveCell.Value
End Sub
3. Show or Hide zeros in active sheet
This macro toggles the display of zero-value cells on the active sheet.
Sub Hide_Zeros()
' Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+Z
If TypeName(Selection) <> "Range" Then Exit Sub
ActiveWindow.DisplayZeros = Not ActiveWindow.DisplayZeros
End Sub
4: Show or Hide page-breaks in active sheet
This macro toggles the display of page-breaks on the active sheet.
Sub ShowHidePageBreaks()
' Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+J
If TypeName(Selection) <> "Range" Then Exit Sub
ActiveSheet.DisplayPageBreaks = Not
ActiveSheet.DisplayPageBreaks
End Sub
As the name suggests , this macro will show or hide the display of page breaks on the active sheet.
5: Display the 'GoTo special' xldialog
Quite often I find myself needing to use the GoTo Special command.
Of course, you can do it the way it was designed in Excel – press F5 to display the GoTo dialog box, and click on the Special… button. This takes one keystroke and a mouse-click; or 3 keystrokes (if you don’t use the mouse) 🙂
Or you can display the Goto > Special… dialog box (using a macro) with just 1 click of the mouse or 2 keystrokes (if you pin it on the QAT) !
Sub xlSelectSpecial()
On Error GoTo NotFound
If Selection.Cells.Count = 1 Then
MsgBox "Select more than 1 cell...", vbExclamation, "Select more cells..."
Exit Sub
End If
Application.Dialogs(xlDialogSelectSpecial).Show
Exit Sub
NotFound:
myMsgText = "No such cells found"
myTitle = "Not found"
myConfig = vbOKOnly + vbExclamation
myMessage = MsgBox(myMsgText, myConfig, myTitle)
End Sub
As you will notice, the macro has an error-checking line in case the type of ‘special cell’ you selected is not found. E.g. if you’re looking for blank cells in the selection, and all the cells in it are non-blank, the macro will display a message accordingly.
The macro also checks whether more than one cell is selected before executing the dialog. The reason for this is that if a single cell is selected, many of the options in the GoTo Special dialog box will execute on the entire ‘UsedRange’ of the spreadsheet, instead of the selected range.
If you wish, you can comment out the If … End If construct and test the macro to see what I mean.
6: Zoom-in / Zoom-out
These macros zoom in or zoom out on the worksheet, in increments of 5%.
Sub MyZoomIn()
' Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+E
Dim ZP As Integer
ZP = ActiveWindow.Zoom
If ZP >= 400 Then
ZP = 400
Else
ZP = ZP + 5
End If
ActiveWindow.Zoom = ZP
End Sub
Sub MyZoomOut()
' Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+E
Dim ZP As Integer
ZP = ActiveWindow.Zoom
If ZP <= 10 Then
ZP = 10
Else
ZP = ZP - 5
End If
ActiveWindow.Zoom = ZP
End Sub
As you will notice, will increase or decrease the zoom percentage by 5 points each time the macro is executed. The If… Then… Else… constructs are there to prevent an error if the current zoom percentage is already at the maximum or minimum level, when the macro is executed.
That’s all for this post from my side. I hope you will find it useful.
I welcome comments, suggestions for improvement & criticisms from readers on this topic, and the macros I have shared in this post.
[Secret transmission ended.]
Hey, thanks KV for sharing those shortcut-charged shortcuts. I look forward to torturing some more of that ill-gotten wisdom out of you. (While I don’t condone torture, I hate inefficient use of Excel even more. So while it’s going to hurt you more than me, it’s for the greater good.)
About the Author
KV is an undercover secret agent who spends his time rescuing the world from the crushing weight of evil, bloated spreadsheets.
His mild-mannered alter ego - Khushnood Viccaji - is a freelance professional and an expert in Management Information Systems and Business Applications with a focus on Data Management, Analytics, Transformation, Auditing, and Reporting.
Both these chaps have a flair for understanding and applying technology in business processes and an ability to present business information in many different ways. And one of them wears lycra.
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.