Excel to the Next Level by Mastering Multiple Occurrences

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This is a guest post by Sohail Anwar.

August 29, 1994. A day that changed my life forever. Football World Cup? Russia and China de-targeting nuclear weapons against each other? Anniversary of the Woodstock festival?

No, much bigger: Two Undertakers show up at WWE Summerslam for an epic battle. Needless to say: MIND() = BLOWN().

Excel to next level by mastering multiple occurrences - Pic1

And thus begun one boy’s journey into understanding the phenomenon of Multiple Occurrences.

My journey continued, when just a few years later my grandfather handed me down a precious family heirloom: A few columns of meaningless data that I could take away and analyze in Excel. You may laugh but in the 90’s, every boy only wanted two things 1) Lists of pointless data and 2) To be as bad ass as this guy:

Excel to next level by mastering multiple occurrences - Pic2

Ohhh yeah.

All good but how best to deal with multiple occurrences? Well, it broadly involves a cunning collusion of SMALL, LARGE, IF and our good friend the Array formula. To explain, let’s have a look at one of granddad’s prized pointless lists:

Excel to next level by mastering multiple occurrences - Pic3

All kinds of repetition of names exist here, so how, for example, can we look up the pointless things about ‘Das Hoff’?

Excel to next level by mastering multiple occurrences - Pic4

A typical VLOOKUP or INDEX/MATCH combo will give us the first entry (‘Talented’), but what about the rest? The following ARRAY formula will saves us:

SMALL(IF(Lookup Range = Lookup Value, Row(Lookup Range),Row ()-# of rows below start row of Lookup Range)

Entered with Ctrl + Shift + Enter because it’s an Array formula

In this case:

SMALL(IF($A$1:$A$20=$E$2,ROW($A$1:$A$20)),ROW()-2)

 

Bear in mind this will give us the position numbers of the multiple occurrences in our main list. That’s a good start. Now we drag this formula down so we end up with another list since our need to find multiple occurrences will necessitate creating another shorter subset of the main list, even if there are just two entries. How far do we drag it down? It doesn’t matter too much but enough to capture the likely number of multiple occurrences. we’ll come back to this point in a bit.

I just want to bring your attention to the last part of our SMALL formula, in this case ROW()-2. This creates a rank; think of it as 1st occurrence, 2nd occurrence…as you are dragging the formula down.

Why did I put Row()-2? Well I placed it in a cell which is in the 3rd row and as a rule the first instance of the formula you write, you want the Row()-x to equal 1 (assuming your lookup range starts from row 1). So if your looukup range is in A1:D20 and your first SMALL formula is in cell E5 then you will write ROW()-4 at the end .

Let’s see what happens when we put the formula in E3, search for ‘Michael Bluth’ and drag down to E7:

Excel to next level by mastering multiple occurrences - Pic5

We can visually see there are just two entries in the main list and their position numbers have come through nicely (4 and 7). Beyond that we are met with the #NUM! error. So from here, we need to do two things

  1. Utilize the position number to give us value or related value from the list (i.e. do what the lookup is supposed to do!)
  2. Conceal the errors.

To accomplish (1) we can just put this whole thing into an INDEX formula, define an array size (same vertical dimensions as our main table), use our SMALL formula to provide the row number, then define whatever column number we want, in this case we want column 2:

INDEX($B$1:$B$20,SMALL(IF($A$1:$A$20=$E$2,ROW($A$1:$A$20)),ROW()-2),1)

Which yields:

Excel to next level by mastering multiple occurrences - Pic6

Now, the final bit involves wrapping all this in our trusted friend IFERROR for some easy tidying up:

IFERROR(INDEX($B$1:$B$20,SMALL(IF($A$1:$A$20=$E$2,ROW($A$1:$A$20)),ROW()-2),1),"")

Excel to next level by mastering multiple occurrences - Pic7

Ta da! Let’s have a quick recap of how we evolved the formula.

Comparison of multiple occurrence formulas in Excel

What else can we do?

Let’s extend this bad boy formula and make it really work for us. Here are some select ways I have extended the Multiple Occurrence formula to help extract from challenging text data.

Please download the workbook, since it contains the examples for your learning pleasure.

Note: Temporarily for this next section, I am going to ignore the IFERROR and the INDEX parts purely to make the formula slighter shorter and thus a bit easier to read. Instead, what we will get are the position numbers (which are good enough to demonstrate how the formulas work). Relax, in the final section, I’ll bring them back in!

Descending List

Okay, not very exciting, but if we wanted our list to be in a descending order, we simply switch the SMALL with LARGE!

LARGE(IF($A$1:$A$20=$E$2,ROW($A$1:$A$20)),ROW()-2)

Excel to next level by mastering multiple occurrences - Pic8

Partial Text Search

What if just want to look for part of the text? Easy!

SMALL(IF(IFERROR(SEARCH($G$2,$A$1:$A$20)>0,FALSE),ROW($A$1:$A$20)),ROW()-2)

Excel to next level by mastering multiple occurrences - Pic9

The urge to use a wildcard just won’t work due to the mechanism of an Array. Arrays require like for like comparisons and a partial text won’t correspond to a range. So we need to create TRUE and FALSE outputs, which is what wrapping the SEARCH(…)>0 in an IFERROR does.

Left side of Text

Let’s say we are looking for a first name in a cell with a full name, we can do:

SMALL(IF(LEFT($A$1:$A$20,LEN($I$2))=$I$2,ROW($A$1:$A$20)),ROW()-2)

Excel to next level by mastering multiple occurrences - Pic10

Some of you are thinking, well this can be achieved with a partial text search and most of the time you are right. But I routinely deal with tens of thousands of rows of data with varying text and used to fall foul of not preparing for every permutation or combination. It’s subtle but it can be very useful.

Partial text in the right side

‘Now you’re just being silly Sohail! Who needs this?’ I’ll stand by what I said, when you work with lots of data and need to extract all kinds of things, this sort of formula soon finds a place! Unfortunately I can’t reproduce data that I’ve worked with to show you the reality of needing something like this. It’s not often but once in a while it comes and it’s quicker then VBAing!

SMALL(IF(IFERROR(SEARCH($K$2,RIGHT($A$1:$A$20,LEN($A$1:$A$20)-SEARCH(" ",$A$1:$A$20)))>0,FALSE),ROW($A$1:$A$20)),ROW()-2)

Excel to next level by mastering multiple occurrences - Pic11

So we’re just searching for things past the first space, this sort of thing would need to be extended as more spaces crop up but you get the point.

Multiple Occurrences and Multiple Criteria!

What?! This is more confusing than making Time Traveling Flux Capacitors.

Excel to next level by mastering multiple occurrences - Pic12

Okay, to make this work, let’s increase our data set, I’m going to throw in a region column for all the patriots in da house.

Excel to next level by mastering multiple occurrences - Pic13

So now things are getting interesting. ‘Das Hoff’ is a great example; we can see from a visual inspection he covers two regions (discussing the dual German and US citizenship of the Hoff is out of the scope of this article, but just know how awesome he is!). How can we lookup the two different occurrences of ‘Das Hoff’?

Easy, but first if we harken back to the ultimate VLOOKUP trick I suggested the use of CHOOSE in an array to create ‘virtual’ helper columns, the good news is since we are in an Array format, its pretty straightforward do this without messing with VLOOKUP or CHOOSE. So we simply concatenate the Person and Region ranges and we concatenate the Person and Region lookup cells:

=SMALL(IF($A$1:$A$20&$B$1:$B$20=$E$2&$F$2,ROW($A$1:$A$20)),ROW()-2)

So now if we look up ‘Das Hoff’ in ‘Germany’ and ‘US’ we get:

Excel to next level by mastering multiple occurrences - Pic14

Das ist gut, nein? Ja, Über gut.

Let’s go a step further; what if we wanted to separately lookup the First and Last names? Easy, same concatenation but also concatenate a space in between, like so:

=SMALL(IF($A$1:$A$20=$K$2&" "&$L$2,ROW($A$1:$A$20)),ROW()-2)

So if we are searching for the first name ‘Thom’ and surname ‘Morello’ we get:

Excel to next level by mastering multiple occurrences - Pic15

There you have it. Multiple Occurrences WITH Multiple Lookups, take that to the bank!

Autofiltering without an Autofilter!

So, now we have seen the power of what can be done with Multiple Occurrences, how else might we use this in our work? Well, in the Chandoo tradition of creating awesome dashboards let’s build a bit of interactivity in a dashboard. Now I’m not going to build a dashboard, the web’s finest materials on dashboards can already be found on Chandoo.org! No point me recreating. What if we want to create a makeshift Autofilter in the middle of a dashboard/report? We can use everything we’ve learned about Multiple Occurrences and with a bit of conditional formatting we can cook up something pretty decent.

Excel to next level by mastering multiple occurrences - Pic16

How about we poach the multiple criteria technique from the previous section: First Name, Surname and also Region as drop downs (by using simple data validation lists) to control a table of formulas:

Excel to next level by mastering multiple occurrences - Pic17

Let’s just look at the formula in each column of the table:

Column 1: Person

IFERROR(INDEX($A$1:$C$20, SMALL(IF($A$1:$A$20&$B$1:$B$20=$F$3&" "&$F$4&$F$5, ROW($A$1:$A$20)),ROW()-2),1),"")

Column 2: Region

IFERROR(INDEX($A$1:$C$20, SMALL(IF($A$1:$A$20&$B$1:$B$20=$F$3&" "&$F$4&$F$5, ROW($A$1:$A$20)),ROW()-2),2),"")

 Column 3: Pointless Thing

IFERROR(INDEX($A$1:$C$20, SMALL(IF($A$1:$A$20&$B$1:$B$20=$F$3&" "&$F$4&$F$5, ROW($A$1:$A$20)),ROW()-2),3),"")

The only difference between these is the Column number in the INDEX formulas. Now, I am fully aware of the absurdity of having your search criteria (Name and Region) appear in the results table but it’s cool, I’m just illustrating with minimal pointless made up data. Let’s try using this:

Excel to next level by mastering multiple occurrences - Pic18

Selecting Thom, Yorke and UK gives us a nice chunky result. And how did we get it looking so slick with expanding/contracting borders and alternating colored rows?! Easy, let’s take a closer look at the conditional formatting:

Excel to next level by mastering multiple occurrences - Pic19

Pay close attention to the order of the conditions, it won’t work properly otherwise. The formulas used are:

For the first condition, I have selected ‘No Color’ for fill:

Excel to next level by mastering multiple occurrences - Pic20

For the second condition, the formula is:

=NOT(MOD(ROW(),2)) – Choose a white fill AND complete Border around the cell.

For the last condition, the formula is:

=AND(MOD(ROW(),2)=1,H3<>"")
– Choose a colored fill (I’ve gone with blue) AND complete Border around the cell.

The last thing is to turn the grid-lines off or at least paint the cells in and around the table white. Have a look in the workbook if it doesn’t make sense.

Download Example Workbook

Click here to download Multiple Occurrences workbook. It contains all the examples. Play with the formulas to learn more.

Conclusions

So there you go. I hope you have taken away a number of things about the value of extracting multiple occurrences from a list and a technique for enhancing interactive reporting. If there is one thing I really wanted to convey during this article, its how much I love the Hoff and we can never have enough occurrences of this Germanic demigod. If you enjoyed this article then please share it and let’s get a discussion going in the comments to see what other multiple occurrence madness we can come up with!

Added by Chandoo

Thank you so much Sohail for another wonderful, intelligent & useful article. I had loads of fun reading & learning from it.

If you enjoyed this, please say thanks to Sohail in the comments section.

Keen to learn Advanced Formulas?

Check out Formula Forensics & Array Formula pages.

About the author: Sohail Anwar is a Londoner who has spent over 10,000 hours applying Excel in his professional life and earns well over 6 figures as a result. Now he is on a mission to teach professionals how to massively increase their earnings by learning and applying Excel like never before. Find out more about Sohail on Earnwithexcel and connect with him on LinkedIn.

 

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29 Responses to “You are invited [personal]”

  1. Umar says:

    Dear Sir,
    This is to just Wish the kids a Happy birthday in Advance.May Almighty bless them all strength,Success

  2. Nanda says:

    Dear Chandoo,

    My best wishes to your child.I had become regular visitor of your site and finally today it made me to post a comment...

  3. Best wishes from my end! Dont think it would be possible to personally come .. but my best wishes would always be there!! 🙂

  4. bill says:

    Chandoo, thank you for the kind invitation. I wish a special birthday day for your daughters, Nishanth & Nakshatra. Will you be serving "dudh pakh"?
    -bill

  5. Venus says:

    What a kind thought to invite us!
    I pray your family will be continually blessed.

  6. Jerryboy says:

    Thank you very much for the invitation, how I wish Philippines is just a Jeepney ride away from India. Best wishes for your baby girls and more blessings to come.

  7. Francis Chin says:

    Hi Chandoo,

    Thanks for the invitation ! You treat everyone that comes to your site as part of your family community. Me and my family wishes Nishanth & Nakshatra a very very happy birthday !!

    Though physically we cant be with you to celebrate the occasion, you know our blessing are with you !

    To be a father is not easy, furthermore you have to be a father to 2 kids !

    Francis
    Dad of 2 and 9 year old.

  8. Emma says:

    Hi Chandoo,
    It was very kind of you to invite us all along to the 'Extravaganza'. Like others that have commented here I too, am to far (Australia) to pop over for a piece of cake 🙂 Best wishes to you and your family on such a milestone.
    Emma
    (soon to be mum of 1!!!)

  9. Vijesh says:

    Dear Chandoo
    God bless Nishanth & Nakshatra. Wishing you and your family a very enjoyable first birthday party.
    (Father of a 9 month baby... wondering how you manage 2 !!! )

  10. Ninad Pradhan says:

    God bless the little ones. Have a blast.

  11. fred says:

    Hi Chandoo

    Happy birthday !
    Indeed children are a blessing and make our lives much more deeper.

  12. govi says:

    Wow! I wonder how that would look; all those Excel users partying with your cute kids!
    Enjoy the festivities and remember; they grow up really fast.

  13. Ram Kapoor says:

    Dear Chandoo,

    Thanks for your invitation!

    Please accept my wishes for Nishanth & Nakshatra, and a very very happy birthday to both of them.

    (Father of a 1 year old baby)

  14. Vijay says:

    Hi Chandoo,

    Thanks for the invitation. Wishing Nishanth and Nakshatra a very happy birthday and God bless all of you!

  15. Lynn says:

    Howdy Chandoo,
    Gosh, would love to attend the birthday party for your little blessings but I live in Dallas, TX. The children are beautiful. Thank you so much for the Excel information, tips, hints, special formulas, etc., you and your children are really a blessing. I look forward to your e-mails and check your web site frequently. Regards, Lynn

  16. Kalyan Verma says:

    Chandoo Garu,

    Your kids look adorable. Congratulations. My Aashirwaadam to both of them.

    Regards,
    Kalyan Verma

  17. Chandoo says:

    @all: Thank you every one for the wishes, blessings and prayers. We are very excited and busy with the birthday preps now. I will share a pic or two when its over... 🙂

  18. Nilesh Desai says:

    Wish you and your entire family all the blessings. May god provide your babies with all the love and charm in the entire universe.

  19. Helen says:

    Like Emma I am rather far away (South Africa), but best wishes to you and your family on this special occasion.
    (Mother of 7 and grandmother of 5)

  20. Rajatha says:

    Dear Chandoo,

    May God Bless your little ones with Good Health... Happy birthday to them from me... Wish i could be there but work doesn't permit me to travel 🙁

    And thanks again for treating all of us like your family

    Rajatha

  21. saurabh says:

    Sir.

    God bless the two little angels with all the happiness in the world.....

  22. Penny Bradley says:

    Wishing Nishanth and Nakshatra a very happy first birthday. My youngest has just turned 18, and I wish you and your family every happiness in the exciting journey ahead.

  23. Julien G says:

    Hi Chandoo,

    I'm reading your blog for more than a year now, and i'm very pleased by this invitation.
    I wish a very special Happy Birthday to the 2 little ones from Mauritius Island.

    If, for any reason, you are coming on the island in the future, feel free to drop me a mail.

    Have a nice party, and a nice year to come with Nishanth and Nakshatra.

  24. John Franco says:

    Happy birthday!

    Your babies are beautiful!

    This year is not possible for us to attend. My family will be there for your next family party.

    Enjoy the cake and dinner

  25. Pankaj Kumar says:

    May God Bless your little ones with Good Health… Happy birthday to them from me....I am also the father my little daughter named akanksha, she is 2.5 yrs old,,,,but i am unemployed 2 yrs ,,i know when u become a dad u r many hopes.

  26. V S Venkatraman says:

    Guru

    My belated wishes for your kids... I feel sorry for having missed them to wish to the right time.... May almighty shower all his blessings on your family.....

    With regards

  27. Gene Magerr says:

    Chandoo,

    Congratulations. Please give you children a big Happy Birthday (one day late) from me. Enjoy, they grow up very fast

    Gene

  28. Chandoo says:

    @all.. thanks for the wishes and blessings. We had a fantastic weekend with all the relatives, friends. Kids loved the cake, enjoyed the beach and had fun playing with gifts. Here are some photos..

    birthday-morningkids-at-beach

  29. Mick C says:

    Chandoo & family - greetings from Ireland, hope you enjoyed the day!

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