The other day I was watching Formula 1 on TV. I think it is the ideal game to follow for a lazy dude like me. It is on every other weekend. It takes .32 seconds to understand the game and 3.2 seconds to know the points and scoring mechanism. But I am not here to convince you to follow the game. I am here, however to convince you to follow my blog (and twitter too).
Tee hee…
On a more serious note, while looking at score boards, it struck me,
“how about writing excel formulas for sorting a list of durations (or numbers) in the formula 1 order?”
Not clear? See this:
Here is the formula:
- Assuming the durations are in the range B3:B9
- First cell has the formula
=SMALL($B$3:$B$9,ROWS(B$3:$B3)) - Subsequent cells have the formula
="+ " &TEXT((SMALL($B$3:$B$9,ROWS(B$3:$B4))-$C$3)*24*60*60,"0.0")&" secs"
Note that I have assumed the range B3:B9 is unsorted.
How the formula works?
- Just like a formula 1 car – smooth and fast 😛
- We are using small() to fetch the smallest value from the range of durations for the first formula.
- For the subsequent formulas, we just subtract the smallest value form nth smallest value and use TEXT() to show it in + xx.xx secs format.
- We are using ROWS() for … ?
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11 Responses to “Fix Incorrect Percentages with this Paste-Special Trick”
I've just taught yesterday to a colleague of mine how to convert amounts in local currency into another by pasting special the ROE.
great thing to know !!!
Chandoo - this is such a great trick and helps save time. If you don't use this shortcut, you have to take can create a formula where =(ref cell /100), copy that all the way down, covert it to a percentage and then copy/paste values to the original column. This does it all much faster. Nice job!
I was just asking peers yesterday if anyone know if an easy way to do this, I've been editing each cell and adding a % manually vs setting the cell to Percentage for months and just finally reached my wits end. What perfect timing! Thanks, great tip!
If it's just appearance you care about, another alternative is to use this custom number format:
0"%"
By adding the percent sign in quotes, it gets treated as text and won't do what you warned about here: "You can not just format the cells to % format either, excel shows 23 as 2300% then."
Dear Jon S. You are the reason I love the internet. 3 year old comments making my life easier.
Thank you.
Here is a quicker protocol.
Enter 10000% into the extra cell, copy this cell, select the range you need to convert to percentages, and use paste special > divide. Since the Paste > All option is selected, it not only divides by 10000% (i.e. 100), it also applies the % format to the cells being pasted on.
@Martin: That is another very good use of Divide / Multiply operations.
@Tony, @Jody: Thank you 🙂
@Jon S: Good one...
@Jon... now why didnt I think of that.. Excellent
Thank You so much. it is really helped me.
Big help...Thanks
Thanks. That really saved me a lot of time!
Is Show Formulas is turned on in the Formula Ribbon, it will stay in decimal form until that is turned off. Drove me batty for an hour until I just figured it out.