I was recently asked, What is my most recommended Excel Tip?
My quick response was to regularly press Ctrl+S, Yes simply Save.
I have been caught out a number of times developing large excel systems where I haven’t saved data and after 2 or 3 hours of work I have lost that work when Excel or the Computer has crashed etc.
Close behind Ctrl+S is setting up the printer and page size as early in a project as you can.
But this got me thinking what would other Microsoft MVP’s Excel suggestions be ?
So I shot off an email to all the other Microsoft Excel MVP’s asking for their favorite Excel Tip, Trick, Cheat, VBA Code, Excel Formula or Function, Algorithm or Hack.
This post will now present these in the order they were received.
001. Assign Sequential Numbers – Bob Umlas
There are many ways to assign successive numbers using VBA, but I believe this one is the quickest.
If I know I have a range, referenced by the object variable Rg, for example, I could assign successive numbers parallel to that range by this statement:
Rg.Offset(, 1).Value = [row(1:10000)]
If Rg is 10 rows long, this will assign the values 1-10 (not 1-10000).
Tip contributed by: Bob Umlas
Website: This isn’t Excel it’s Magic!
002. Format This Object – Jon Peltier
With any object selected, be it a Cell, Range, Worksheet, Chart, Chart Component, Text Box or other shape, Hyper Link, anything, Select the Object and press Ctrl+1. The Format Properties Dialog will be shown.
003. Stop Cell Change by Color – Rick Rothstein
Rick has provided a piece of VBA Code that stops a user entering data into a Yellow colored cell.
It is event code, so all of it should be placed in a sheet module (right click the sheet’s name tab, select “View Code” and copy/paste it into the code window that opens up… remember to save the sheet as an “Excel Macro-Enabled Workbook” if using XL2007 or above).
What the code does is, without having to protect the sheet, prevent a user from selecting any cell that has been manually colored yellow (you can, of course, change the color as desired). If the user attempts to select such a cell, the previously active cell will become re-selected. While the code works with yellow-filled cells, the If condition can be changed to test for any cell property (for example, bold text) or set of cell properties (red, underlined text) and it will work just as well.
Here is the code…
Tip contributed by: Rick Rothstein
Website: http://www.excelfox.com/forum/f22/
004. Double Click Copy – Bill Jelen
Double click the fill handle to quickly copy a formula to the bottom of the adjacent data set.
This is the Mouse Version of Copy Down as presented in Point 013 below.
Tip contributed by: Bill Jelen
Website: MrExcel.com
005. VBA Code Check – Felipe Costa Gualberto
It is widely known that you should use Option Explicit in the declaration section of all components, and I agree with that.
The tip I give needs Option Explicit in the declaration section:
You should often compile your project. Use the Alt+D and press Enter to ensure your code is correct and you’ll have no surprises while running your macro. A VBA project that doesn’t compile is a bad project.
When you request to compile the code, VBE passes through all your code, checking if there aren’t undeclared variables, missing references, bad syntax, etc.
I’m heavily addicted compiling my code and I do it every minute when developing an Excel Application.
Take advantage the fact that compiling speed in VBA is blazing fast!
Tip contributed by: Felipe Costa Gualberto
Website: http://www.ambienteoffice.com.br
006. Name Manager – Henk Vlootman
For me the Name box and the Name manager prove to be of priceless value.
Since I only work with ranges. I use the Name functionality as the place where I control my ranges.
If I have a complex model I can use the name box to down-drill my output by my formulas until I arrive at the input. Without this functionality maintaining Excel models proofs to be very difficult.
Tip contributed by: Henk Vlootman
Website: Vlootman.nl
007. Show Pivot tables in Classical Form – Mynda Treacy
If you find yourself regularly editing the PivotTable options to get the Classic PivotTable Layout back, you know the useful layout where the row labels aren’t nested, then you might like to add the ‘Show in Tabular Form’ icon to your Quick Access Toolbar.
To do this Right Click on the Quick Access Toolbar and select Customize Quick Access Toolbar
The Show in Tabular Form Icon in the QAT
And while you’re there you’ll probably want to add the ‘Do Not Show Subtotals’ icon too
Tip contributed by: Mynda Treacy
Web site: http://www.myonlinetraininghub.com/blog
008. Easily add a Table of Contents to a File – Jan Karel Pieterse
The lowest level of documentation I add to a spreadsheet model is a table of content.
With many sheets in a workbook, this can be a tedious chore however. Lets have some tips around this.
1. Getting the list of sheets.
– Open the VBA editor (alt+F11):
– open the immediate pane (control+g or View, Immediate pane)
– Paste this line of code and hit enter:
For Each s in Worksheets: Debug.Print s.Name: Next
– Hold down the shift key and press arrow up until you’ve selected all sheetnames:
– control+c
– Go to your Excel TOC worksheet and press control+v:
2. Create hyperlinks to the worksheets
Enter this formula in cell B2:
=HYPERLINK(“#'”&A2&”‘!A1”,A2)
Note the hash, it ensures the link actually works! The single quote is there in case your worksheet
name has special characters like spaces.
– Drag the formula down (double-click the fill handle)
– Format the linked cells (hit control+1) like so:
o A fat black line along the right-hand side and the bottom:
o An equally fat grey line along the left-hand side and the top:
o A darker grey fill:
o Change the Font to black, increase the font size, make it Bold and white and remove the underline:
o Which makes your links look like this:
I have created a small utility that automates the process of updating the table of content: Download Link
Tip contributed by: Jan Karel Pieterse
Website: http://www.jkp-ads.com/
009. Jump to the last cell of a contiguous range – Mike Alexander
Did you know you can quickly jump to the last cell in a column or a row with a simple double-click of the mouse?
Columns:
Rows:
Caution: Be careful of blank cells. If you have a blank cell in the column or row, the cursor will jump to the last cell before the blank cell.
Website: http://www.
010. Jump to a Filter’s search box – Jon Acampora
Alt+Down Arrow, E will jump the mouse cursor to the search box in the filter drop-down menus.
011. Use Ctrl+Enter – Tom Ogilvy
My favorite tip is to use Ctrl+Enter rather than Enter to fill any selection of contiguous or non-contiguous cells with whatever is in the active cell of the selection.
This can be a formula such as to generate random data to using in testing.
For example if I need integer data in C2:C10; E2:G10 then I select that range, go to the formula bar and enter =Trunc(rand()*100+1) and complete with Ctrl+Enter. If I want to fix those numbers, I can then select the rectangular area doing a copy and then Paste Values.
A second tip using this technique is to build a pivot table to produce a subset of my data. Then do a copy and paste values to leave the values and removed the pivot table. Select the area of row fields which will have many blank values. Do F5 (goto) and choose special, then blanks. This will select all the blank fields that need to be filled in. Look at the active cell of the selection. Say it is B4. We can see that we want to fill each blank with the next value directly above it. Go to the formula bar and type in =B3 which refers to the non-blank cell above B4, then use Ctrl+Enter. Your data base is completed but we need to remove the formulas. Select all the row field area; do copy and then paste values to remove the formulas and replace them with the values they produce.
Tip contributed by: Tom Ogilvy
Website: http://www.allexperts.com/ep/1059-2697/Excel/Tom-Ogilvy.htm
012. Keep Dummy Data nearby – Oz du Soleil
Tip contributed by: Oz du Soleil
Website: DataScopic.net
013. Copy Down / Copy Right – Zack Barresse
You can Copy Down or Copy Right using CTRL+D, CTRL+R (Fill Down, Right)
Copy Down
Copy Right
This is the Keyboard Version of Double Click Copy as presented in Point 004 above.
Tip contributed by: Zack Barresse
Website: http://exceltables.com/
014. Learn to use Google Search – Ian Huitson
I have answered nearly 10,000 posts at the http://forum.chandoo.org/ and one thing I have found is that it is very rare to get asked questions that haven’t been answered before, very rare.
Learn to use Google Search and some common websites like http://chandoo.org/wp/ and the other websites shown by the authors above. These websites all have search boxes which search the local website.
These websites have a wealth of Excel history, with worked and solved examples in posts and forums
Sometime the example might be of a mine feasibility study where you are after data on DNA Sequencing, but the solution to the data manipulation maybe very similar, so learn to think laterally about your problem and you’ll be amazed at the solutions that can be found
Tip contributed by: Ian Huitson “Hui”
Website: http://chandoo.org/wp/about-hui/
015. Trim with any delimiter – Rick Rothstein
Excel’s TRIM function is neat in that it collapses all multiple internal contiguous space characters down to a single space…
Did you ever wish there was a simple way to do that for any delimiter other than a space?
Here is a function that will do it for you…
This function must be saved in a Code Module, not a Worksheet Module
The first argument is the text you want to parse. The second argument is the delimiter (which can be one or more characters long). The third argument, which is optional, let’s you specify whether you want to keep or delete any leading or trailing delimiters which may end up in the result (Excel’s TRIM function automatically deletes leading and trailing spaces, but I decided to let it be an option). The default is False which means leading and trailing delimiters will be deleted. So, let’s say you had a concatenation function of some sort which produced the following output…
If in Cell A1 you had: one, , , two, three, , , , , , , four, , ,_
Note there is a trailing space at the end of the above text string. Passing this text into the Reduce function, and specifying “, ” (comma space) as the delimiter, would result in the following text being returned from the function…
Using the function: =Reduce(A1, “, ” ) or =Reduce(A1, “, “, False )
Excel will return: one, two, three, four
Note: For those of you who may be wondering about those numbers in the Array function call, here is a link to the thread where they originally came from…
https://groups.google.com/ forum/#!topic/microsoft. public.vb.general.discussion/ TqZHK9cPnpU
Tip contributed by: Rick Rothstein
Website: http://www.excelfox.com/forum/f22/
016. The Bad Find Example – Stephen Gersuk
Dating back to as early as 2002, VBA Help has contained an awful example of how to use the Find method. It continued until as recently as Excel 2010.
On the merely bad side, you should explicitly set LookIn, LookAt, SearchOrder (if you care), and MatchByte arguments in the initial invocation of the Find method, as all persist each time Find is invoked via VBA or Find is invoked from the user interface. (MatchCase and SearchFormat persist from invocation to invocation in the UI, but not in VBA; both default to False).
But this line,
… should NEVER be used, because
- If c Is Nothing, then c.Address will give a run-time error; and
- If c.Address doesn’t error, then c Is Nothing must be False.
You might think that VBA would stop evaluating the expression if “c Is Nothing“, but it doesn’t; VBA always evaluates all arguments to a logical expression.
What to do instead?
That depends on what else the loop does.
If it causes the values to eventually not be found (e.g., because you are changing the values, or hiding the rows in which they appear), then the c is Nothing test is what you need. If the same values will be found forever (e.g., because you are changing some other cell in the same row where the value is found), then c.Address <> firstAddress is golden.
The one-size-fits-all solution is to just do both:
Tip contributed by: Stephen Gersuk
Website: http://www.stephensexcel.info/
Closing
Many many thanks to the Microsoft Excel MVPs who contributed above.
I hope you get to to revue all the tips and pass comments and appreciation back to the authors as appropriate.
Next week the Excel Tips, Tricks, Cheats & Hacks theme will continue with the Excel Tips, Tricks, Cheats & Hacks – Chandoo.org Excel Ninja Edition, so keep an eye out for that.
If you have any Excel Tips, Tricks, Cheats & Hacks that you would like to share with the community, please leave a tip in the comments below.
60 Responses
My most often used variation of this is to remove blanks from a list.
Suppose column A contains information but some of the rows are blank. I want to return a continuous list of information without the blanks so I do…
Your original formula looks like this:
=IFERROR(INDEX($B$1:$B$20,SMALL(IF($A$1:$A$20=$E$2,ROW($A$1:$A$20)),ROW()-2),1),””)
I want to look for non-blanks and all my data is in column A so I change it to:
=IFERROR(INDEX($A$1:$A$20,SMALL(IF($A$1:$A$20″”,ROW($A$1:$A$20)),ROW()-2),1),””)
Ctrl+Shift+Enter, fill down and ta-da! A nice continuous list of information without any blanks.
=IFERROR(INDEX($A$1:$A$20,SMALL(IF($A$1:$A$20″”,ROW($A$1:$A$20)),ROW()-2),1),””)
The original post chopped out my ‘does not equal’ for some reason. This is how it should look
And again ?????
My sincerest apologies Sohail, I didn’t mean to trash your comments section like this. I’ll stop replying now.
Lol! You didn’t trash the comments Desk Lamp! On the contrary my friend that contribution is brilliant, much appreciated, Thanks!
Hi Sir,
I am not able get any value by using below formula.
=IFERROR(INDEX(DeliveriesMaster!$H:$H,SMALL(IF(Criteria!$A$3=DeliveriesMaster!$A:$A,ROW(DeliveriesMaster!$H:$H)-7,””),ROW()-3)),””)
I want try
help me
Great stuff. I laughed. I cried. I hurled.
Personally I would use a PivotTable and Gordon Ramsay. But hey…as long as we cook the books, then each to their own, I’d say.
Hehe, beautiful retort Jeff
I won’t recommend the use of ROW()-2 because everything gets mess if you insert a row(s) before the row 2. The alternative would be ROWS(E$3:E3).
Regards
Hi Elias,
I tried doing what you have suggested here.
Ading any additional row messes up everything like you siad. But using the formula that you have suggested, shows only one value for the entire array. Would you please help me undersatand your method. I feel I may not be doing it correctly.
Regards
Thank you Sohail. Great post. The comments are also very helpful.
PS! Jamie Oliver was a great choice.
Thanks Denice! Jamie’s always a great choice, we’re from the same county, I’m a big fan!
I’ve been using data with multiple occurrences for awhile now, and was glad to see the question I’ve been trying to ask and don’t know how finally got answered. Now if I can be brave enough to use this, is another question.
What I usually do is just add another column to the end of my data =IF((COUNTIF($B$2:B2,B2))=1,1,””) where B is my unique identifier and then just do multiple COUNTIFS with it.
For multiple Occurrences and Criterias, I just add another column to Concatenate my unique identifier and the other criteria =$B2&” “&$C2, then add another column using the same =IF((COUNTIF($B$2:B2,B2))=1,1,””) but this time use the column where I placed the concatenated data.
Any ideas how to lessen the number of columns I use without using any Arrays or VBA’s?
Hi Mando,
Are you pretty much asking for an alternative way to do this without VBA/Array Formulas? If so, I would recommend not doing that, Arrays make things a bit easier. The method you wrote looks like it will increase work, I’m always in search of efficiency in the long term 🙂
It’s both illogical and unnecessary to use a construction for SMALL’s (or LARGE’s) k parameter which consists of the ROW function (either in its unqualified form, i.e. ROW(), or with a reference, e.g. ROW(A1)) +/- some constant.
Not only is such a construction necessarily dependent upon the row number in which the user decides to place the initial formula in the series, but it is also susceptible to error upon row insertions within the sheet.
ROWS (i.e. ROWS($1:1), or ROWS(A$1:A1) if you prefer) gives precisely the same results, though suffers from neither of these two drawbacks:
http://excelxor.com/2014/08/25/row-vs-rows-for-consecutive-integer-generation/
Regards
@Elias and XOR LX, great point and while I use the construct you mentioned in other things, I never really gave it too much thought since I owuldn’t readily insert rows in this sort of thing.
I love the rule of ROW(A1) +/- constant being illogical! Any time I can eliminate something from my arsenal due to redundancy is good. Much appreciated and once again this sort of exchange is precisely why we love Chandoo 🙂
Great post, love this way of retrieving lists of items. Will certainly be giving this a go.
I like this technique a lot and *will* be using it. However how can it be done in 2D. E.g I have a 3 by four table (12 items) and each items is either an “Apple” or an “Orange”. I want to get the row and column position of each occurrence of “Apple” and of “Orange”? How would I do this?
@Mr J
When you say “row and column position”, do you mean relative positions or absolute? For example, if your table was in A10:D12, and the first occurrence of “Orange” was in cell B11, would you want 11 (absolute) or 2 (relative) returned for the row position?
Regards
The master database contain name, designation, salary, passport no, expiry date, joining date, project no. camp name, floor no., flat no., room no., around 20 more column, and this is more than 500 staff member.
i want to make report for the camp and i want use the employee ID to transfer their name, designation, flat no., and their room no only to other sheet using VBA code.
Please help me.
Thanks
Great post, love this way of retrieving lists of items.
This was a great post and I learned a lot. i am attempting to do exactly what this post was about with the exception of direction, i want to go across not down. is this possible?
To summarize for those who will not take the time to go through the whole comments list (and who therefore will avoid some brain overload and save some grey cells), use at the end of your array formulas
ROWS($1:1) instead of ROW()-2
it additionally is more intuitive for understanding the formula:
ROWS($1:1) => displays 1st result
ROWS($1:3) => displays 3rd result
…
Thanks all for this posts & comments
Skrattoune
in the Multiple Occurrences fomula, we couldnt get the second line since its not appear, but when we check your file, i saw there is {} brackets before equal but when we extract it we couldnt see it. how to do that?
Difficult to understand
But I am sure it will be of immense use to me
Very useful post. I worked with the downloadable workbook and did some experimenting to see how each part of the formulas worked. Although I understood most of it, I have a question. What if I wanted the results of my search for each person to be listed by column instead of by row?
Hi all,
thanks for the contribution, it helped a lot.
But what if I need to get the average of the multiple values I get?
Is there a way to get the average of these multiple values directly (without listing them beforehand…my sheet is already busy)?
thanks a lot.
What changes would you make to allow these multiple values to be horizontal rather than vertical, as shown?
Mr. Doo, you are so funny! I did not know the multiple occurrences could be done without a (trial and error) macro.
You make it fun to make a complicated task a Can – Do ! Thanks!
Hi,
It looks super helpful.
However, whatever I do it feels I’m almost there… but every time it’s a mirage.
I’ve a (very) big data table consisting of multiple parameters (about 10) for every value in column A. A problem – same A value may (or may not) appear multiple times in my big table. Luckily, the repetition is always in clusters – one after another (and after the cluster ends, there is no more same A).
The goal – I’ve a subset of data consisting of arbitrary values of column A (each one repeats only once), and I want to get all the parameters for all them (including for the as much as there is same A values). With you function, it fills nicely automatically for only the first A, but only once (without considering multiple occurrence), and then jumps to the next one.
Is there a way to solve this (without tediously manually inserting N rows number for N A’s)? I prefer not using macro’s.
Thank you,
Julia
Does anyone know how to summarise the following data to return the record vertically under the expected result?
Much appreciated …
Data is from A1 to D3
Name “Asset Name#1″,”Asset Name#2″,”Asset Name#3”
ABC Asset 1 Asset 2
ZXY Asset 1
Expected Result:
Name: Asset Name
ABC Asset 1
ABC Asset 2
ZXY Asset 1
Hi
What if I have multiple criteria I need to do this for? So in your example, instead of just “Tom Yorke”, I had a list of first and last names I needed to identify all instances of in a larger file. How would I go about doing that? Thanks!!
Hi,
I have 2 sets of name lists in a spreadsheet and need to find whether the same set of names repeat in the consecutive rows. can anyone please help me.
If your name list is in A column:
B=countif(A)
Should work
hi dear
i have a list of persons(First name space last name) in column A. multiple values are equal to first name and last name. ie. A kumar, b kumar alok das, alok ranjan. now i want multiple entries of all matching first name or second name as per my choice, what is the solution.
Hi,
I have 10 rows. in row 1 there are multiple columns. in few colums some values are present. just i wants to count the coulmn number of first record. how do i get it ?
example
A B C D E F G H I J
10 13 19 12 –> here number 10 position is 3
11 2 5 8 –> here number 11 position is 1
23 45 48 –> here number 23 position is 2
@Arvind
Try:
=INDEX(COLUMN(A1:E1),MATCH(TRUE,INDEX(A1:E1<>0,),0)) Ctrl+Shift+Enter
Copy down
Change Column E to match the last column of your data
Hi
I wonder if you have any tutorial (preferably in video format) concerning your technique of sorting a data table in a dashboard based on user choice control button
Thank you
I am trying to subscribe, but I not getting the confirmation email.
I have tried it few times but its not working.
My email is muntoo76@hotmail.com
Great post! Thanks for presenting a solution to a problem I had. However, how do I expand this to search across multiple worksheets? Thanks!
Just to say that you have been the only person I’ve found to bother explaining the rationale behind your function choices. There were other articles on the internet where people didn’t bother to make the effort. Many thanks.
Is there a text character limit to this formula? It works when I enter a few sentences, but not when I have 10 sentences.
@Peter
I don’t believe so
There maybe with pre-2007 versions of Excel
Can you post a sample data
this is the formula I’m running:
=IFERROR(INDEX(Input!$A$1:$R$201,SMALL(IF(IFERROR(SEARCH($E$2,Input!$D$1:$D$201)>0,FALSE),ROW(Input!$D$1:$D$201)),ROW()-5),COLUMN()),””)
and when I have this text paragraph on the sheet I’m pulling from, it won’t pull in:
“We do need a fair amount of analysis in advance of the meeting. Let’s start with a sensitivity analysis at plan value under various assumptions in terms of what lenders take – say 50% up to 100% in 5% increments. Need to understand dilution at various points to each side as we negotiate. If we can get that in the next hour or so, we can figure out what else would be helpful to negotiations. ”
But when I shorten it to:
“We do need a fair amount of analysis in advance of the meeting. Let’s start with a sensitivity analysis at plan value under various assumptions in terms of what lenders take – say 50% up to 100% in 5% increments.”
It works then..
I like your work. the tread has been very informative.
What I am trying to do get the multiple occurrences fill in columns not rows. AKA while you example has results in a the following format:
Thom Yorke
3
8
10
12
18
I want the result to be
Thom Yorke 3 8 10 12 18
Can you assist with this change?
Great work in this article! Very well explained!
But i need some help…
I want to use the Multiple Occurrences and Multiple Criteria with the Partial Text Search.
Example:
1st criteria: G11
2nd criteria: Varnish
3rd criteria: 1503/5
And i want to use in the 3rd criteria only the “1503” to seeach 1503/5, 1503/6 and 1503/7.
Can you help me with this issue?
Hi chandoo, thanks for your wonderful work.
I am in stuck to find a solution to extract multiple rows (by using index+ small+ if) and extract the multi columns to its rows.(multicolumn data should be combined as single).
I repeated the index function three time to get three column’s data and combine it with wild character and got the required answer. But feel this can be done in better way. so Could you please help to simplify the below formula in alternative way.
{=IFERROR(INDEX(Table1,SMALL(IF(Table1[Tag trim]=LEFT(F75,8),ROW(Table1[Tag trim])-1),1),COLUMN(Table1[MAX. LENGTH (mm)
(22)]))&” X “&INDEX(Table1,SMALL(IF(Table1[Tag trim]=LEFT(F75,8),ROW(Table1[Tag trim])-1),1),COLUMN(Table1[MAX. WIDTH (mm)(24)]))&” X “&INDEX(Table1,SMALL(IF(Table1[Tag trim]=LEFT(F75,8),ROW(Table1[Tag trim])-1),1),COLUMN(Table1[HEIGHT (mm)
(23)])),””)}
Hi. Your help in excel is great. It has being very helpfull in a project I am working on.
I got a question about Multiple Occurrences: I am trying to get all different values from the a same date and return values horizontally.
It ls like this:
Date provider
June 2 A
June 2 A
May 3 A
May 3 A
May3 B
April 4 B
April 4 B
April 4 B
April 4 C
April 4 C
April 4 A
Could you please help me with the formula?
I’ve got a lot of hints from this post and was able to get almost there with my task but there is one problem – string length. I have a long list of stuff given in consequtive columns. I need to peak certain type of data (long string) and put them together in one cell. The text type comes after the text, so schematically one raw of the data looks like this (where Ty My Wy Oni etc is the Type and it repeats):
Text_A Ty Text_B My Text_C Wy Text_D Oni Text_E Ja Text_F Ty Text_G My Text_H Wy Text_I Oni Text_J Ja Text_K Ty Text_L My Text_M Wy Text_N Oni Text_O Ja Text_P Ty Text_R My Text_S Wy
What I want is “Text_A, Text_F, Tekst_K, Text_P” if the search=”Ty”
The following works if the string in Text_X is <256; if logner -forget it
=TEXTJOIN(", ";TRUE;IF($C$4:$AL$4="Ty";$B$4:$AK$4;""))
same with error handling
=TEXTJOIN(", ";TRUE;IFERROR(IF($C$4:$AL$4="Ty";$B$4:$AK$4;"");""))
Most of the Index – Small etc solutions take up several cells to work and that is not an option this time. Any hints, please?
Hi Chandoo,
I have been brainstorming this from past couple of months. I work in reporting team and during month end I pull all incident report which has changed priority from P1-P2-P3-P4, P2-P3-P4 or P3 to P4. Currently, I am performing it manually (4000+ count). Below is the sample excel where I would highlight in a different color if priority changes from P1-P2-P3-P4, P2-P3-P4 or P3 to P4. So basically I want to check column A if it has more than 2 similar value it should check the final priority in column B based on Column C’s updated time and it should return value as P1-P2-P3-P4, P2-P3-P4 or P3 to P4 in Column D.
Number Priority Start time
INC0281369 Priority 2 2017-07-03 13:01:07
INC0281369 Priority 4 2017-07-03 13:04:29
INC0281696 Priority 3 2017-07-26 21:20:16
INC0281696 Priority 4 2017-07-27 00:06:21
INC0281962 Priority 3 2017-07-01 01:13:41
INC0281962 Priority 4 2017-07-01 04:21:12
INC0281974 Priority 3 2017-07-01 01:35:41
INC0281974 Priority 4 2017-07-01 03:25:14
INC0281976 Priority 3 2017-07-01 01:40:25
INC0281976 Priority 4 2017-07-01 03:26:29
INC0281985 Priority 2 2017-07-01 02:03:38
INC0281985 Priority 3 2017-07-04 18:29:34
INC0281987 Priority 2 2017-07-01 02:06:38
Any help would be appreciated
You have done a great job, Bravo!
I want the same result but my “Das hoff” is in multiple sheets. Can you please be kind enough to give me the formula to have the same output but the searches are in different sheets.
Thanks in advance.
Nadeem
Hi! Your instruction is great on this however I am still stuck with my formula. I revert back to INDEX/MATCH but I know my data is skewed. I really hope you can help!
I am working with two worksheets, CREDIT _MEMO_ACCRUAL_MASTER & CM_12 – I will reference them as WS A& WS B.
WS A is the master where my formula starts in column 15, row 2. My index/match is based on multiple criteria, Invoice # & Sku, to lookup the Original Invoice Date from Index sheet WS B. WS B only contains original invoice date, sku, credit date and amount.
WS A:
INVOICE# SKU RESULT FROM WS B
139591 XYZ (BLANK)
139612 ABC 12/11/2017
Currently in “RESULT FROM WS B”
=IFERROR(INDEX(CM_12!$B$2:$B$602,MATCH(CREDIT_MEMO_ACCRUAL_MASTER!B2&CREDIT_MEMO_ACCRUAL_MASTER!F2,CM_12!$D$2:$D$602&CM_12!$F$2:$F$602,0)),0)
The trouble is this:
WS B has reoccuring original invoice date and sku. In other words – invoice 139612 on credit date 11/30/2017 may have several different “original invoice dates” and 10 returned skus, therefore show up in 10 different rows.
WB S:
Invoice # Original invoice date Credit date SKU
139612 08/08/2017 11/30/2017 1234
139612 08/21/2017 11/30/2017 5678
139612 08/30/2017 11/30/2017 1234
I need a formula that will recognize the exact original invoice date for an invoice # and sku. Currently my index/match as you know only results in the first instance.
I tried your index/small/if formula but it didnt work for me. index/small/if is very new to me so I am sure i was doing it wrong somewhere.
I really hope you can help!
Happy New Year!
Hi All,
Great post, which I come back to multiple times !!
Can anyone explain to me how to amend the formula when you want to either exclude (e.g. all the lines NOT concerning DAS HOFF) rather than select a certain value, or when you want to allow more than one value (e.g. the lines where DAS HOFF is linked to US or UK)
Thanks for your help.
Geert.
Great post!
How do I get the output of the multiple occurrences into another coloum instead of on the same row?
Thanks
Thanks for the aide. I have been using this formula but the step by step explanation you have given makes me understand now completely the inside chemistry as to what is happening. Keep it up.
Hi Chandoo
I’ve replicated your exact spreadsheet and it works perfectly, thanks! For my actual application, I’m using a Named Table where:
$B$1:$B$20 = Chandoo[PointlessThing]
$A$1:$A$20 = Chandoo[Person]
Replacing the fixed cell references with the Table[Column] values the array formula produces an output that is one cell below what the actual value is. For example, if my lookup value is Das Hoff with the named table I get Amnesiac, Raging, Limb King, Krautrock, Erasing. When I just use the cell references I get Talented, Knightrider, Baywatcher, SpongeBob, Krautrock. As you can see, outputs when using the named table are actually one row below the intended output.
I’ve varied the formula, from completely deleting the -2 in …ROW()-2, to trying 0-3. I can never get the named table formula to output the same results as the cell reference formula.
I’ve noticed the lateral distance doesn’t matter, only the relative horizontal distance, so for that reason my named table formula starts in cell E3, referencing E2 as the lookup value, and my cell reference formula starts in cell G3, referencing G2 as the lookup value. The Person/PointlessThing columns begin at A1 and B1. The table is named “Chandoo.” So my named table references are Chandoo[Person] and Chandoo[PointlessThings].
As a final note, I’m using data validation, referencing the Person column of the named table as my lookup values in cells E2 and G2.
So I retried the formula with dragging ranges (which automatically populates the range name) and I got this:
=IFERROR(INDEX(Chandoo[[#All],[PointlessThing]],SMALL(IF(Chandoo[[#All],[Person]]=$F$3,ROW(Chandoo[[#All],[Person]])),ROW()-2),1),””)
And it works!
Originally I was hand typing it to make sure I got it all right and was entering this:
=IFERROR(INDEX(Chandoo[PointlessThing],SMALL(IF(Chandoo[Person]=$F$3,ROW(Chandoo[Person])),ROW()-2),1),””)
As you can see, I was missing [#All] preceding the column reference.
That said, this also works when referencing another sheet in the workbook, as long as the relative positions stay the same.
What I’ve run into now is this: Where I want the multiple occurrences to appear are ‘Visit Tear Sheet!F12:F16’
The drop-down data validation is Visit Tear Sheet!F8
The table location is ‘Visit Log’B49:C148
I’ve kinda buried the table at the bottom of a spreadsheet because I don’t want non-tech saavy users to easily find it and screw it up. I know I could let it rest on a separate sheet starting at A1 like our sample data set, but I’m trying to keep the number of sheets to a minimum to keep the weight of the file down.
Instead of the results being in downward rows is it possible to put them in the next columns?
Have you ever had to do this using Power Query? Or, know of a way to do something similar, but using Power Query? I have a huge workbook that uses a method similar to yours, but it’s way to slow using the SMALL and ROW formula so I’m trying to speed it up, but by using PQ. Thank you so much in advance for any help!
Can this method work with wildcards? I tried but I could not find a way to make it work.