Recently, we discussed about the case of unwieldy data and how we lookup what we want using formulas like SUMIFS. Today, let us learn few more ways to solve the same problem.
First, a re-cap of the problem:
Here is a data-set:
The problem – build a lookup formula
And the problem. Oh, simple. Write a lookup formula to find how many customer walk-ins we have on any given day.
In the previous article, we discussed how to use SUMIFS to solve this problem. There were several amazing & awesome solutions shared by our readers in the comments section too.
Suitable structure spawns simple solutions
Poorly structured is the 2nd biggest problem of analysts. The first one is not enough coffee. That is why there is a dictum in the data analytics world.
Structure is everything
So, we can easily solve our lookup problem, if our data were to magically re-arranged in 2 column fashion – Data & Value.
This transformation can be done in 2 ways:
Option #1: Transforming Data – Using Formulas
We can use data fetching formulas like OFFSET or INDEX to re-arrange data in 2 columns.
Assuming,
- Our 2D data is in a named range data,
- There are running numbers starting with 0 in the cell J5
We can use below formula to fetch first column:
=IFERROR(INDEX(data,2*(INT(J5/7))+1,MOD(J5,7)+1),"")
for the second column, below formula works:
=IFERROR(INDEX(data,2*(INT(J5/7)+1),MOD(J5,7)+1),"")
How does this formula work?
I will explain the formula for first column. Deciphering 2nd column formula is your homework.
Here is the formula again: =IFERROR(INDEX(data,2*(INT(J5/7))+1,MOD(J5,7)+1),"")
Before understanding the formula, let’s take a minute to examine the structure of our raw data.
- Odd rows contain dates
- Even rows contain values
- There are 7 columns in total
- So to get the first date, we need to go to row 1 (first odd number), column 1
- To get the first value, we need to go to row 2 (first even number), column 1
- But to get 8th date, we need to go to row 3(2nd odd number), column 1
- So on
Let’s go from inside out.
2*(INT(J5/7))+1portion: This gives row number (ie odd number). J5 refers to running number and its value is 0. So we get 2*(INT(0/7))+1 = 1- This will be 3 when J5 becomes J12 (ie 8th date)
MOD(J5,7)+1portion: This gives column number. It will result in values 1 thru 7 in a cyclical fashion. Thanks to MOD.INDEX(data, ..., ...)portion: Now that we have both row & column numbers, INDEX formula kicks in and gets the corresponding date.IFERROR(INDEX(...),"")portion: This is to help in case we ran out of all dates & values in our INDEX formula. Read about IFERROR here.
Once you have the formulas for first date & value, simply drag them to get rest of the values.
Option #2: Transforming data – Using VBA
VBA Macros are perfect for scenarios like this. Usually transformation is something you need to do every-time you import data from external systems. So simply write a macro that can do this automatically.
Assuming our data is in the range data and the first cell of our extraction range is startHere, you can use below macro:
Sub rearrangeData()
'takes the values in DATA named range and rearranges them
'from the named cell startHere
Dim cell As Range, i As Long, j As Long, evenRow As Boolean, firstRow As Long
i = 0
j = 0
firstRow = Range("data").Cells(1).Row
For Each cell In Range("data")
evenRow = (cell.Row - firstRow + 1) Mod 2 = 0
If evenRow Then
Range("startHere").Offset(j, 1).Value = cell.Value
j = j + 1
Else
Range("startHere").Offset(i, 0).Value = cell.Value
i = i + 1
End If
Next cell
End Sub
How does this macro work?
Before jumping in to the lines of code and demystifying the logic, Let’s understand what we need to do:
- For each cell of data,
- If it is in odd row, put the cell data in Date column at end
- Else, put the cell data in Value column at end
- Repeat
This is what our code is trying to do.
Let’s examine the For Each loop, as this is the most critical part of our macro.
- For each cell in the range data
- We check if we are in evenRow using simple arithmetic on row numbers
- If we are in evenRow then
- We put the cell value in row j (number of values so far), column 2
- We increment j
- Else
- We put the cell value in row i (number of dates so far), column 1
- We increment i
- Close the IF condition
- We check for next cell in the data range
Advantages of Transformation over SUMIFS approach
Both options for transforming data have few advantages:
- They work with any type of data (unlike SUMIFS, which works only for numeric lookups and has few other issues)
- Once data is restructured, you can do other types of analysis like creating pivot tables, adding extra calculated columns etc. easily.
Download Example Workbook
Click here to download example workbook that shows original SUMIFS solution, both options for transforming data & few other formulas. Play with it to learn more. Check out the code by pressing ALT+F11.
How would you transform data?
My favorite techniques for transforming data are – VBA, formulas, Power Query, pivot tables & SQL. Depending on the situation, time availability, where my data is, I choose one of these options to scrub my data.
What about you? How do you clean up / scrub data like this? Please share you thoughts & tips with us in comments.
Instructions for washing your dirty data
If your work involves scrubbing dirty data, check out below tutorials too:
- Extract numbers from text using VBA and formulas
- Filling blank cells with above values in tables
- Cleaning up in-correctly formatted dates
- Fixing in-correctly formatted phone numbers
- Reverse a list using INDEX formula
- Transpose a table using formulas
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.