Spelling mistakes are a thing of day to day carporate life. Most of the data in spreadsheets is entered by people and hence prone to having spelling mistakes or alternate spellings. For eg. a person named John could have been spelled as Jon. And when John calls you back to confirm his reservation and you use the search / vlookup to find his information the result would empty.
Here is one technique that I use often when the data has spelling mistakes or I need to do fuzzy search to fetch items that sound or spelled similar. Take the 2 texts you want to compare and,
- Remove all the vowels – AEIOU
- Replace PH with F, Z & J with G, CK with K, W with V, LL with L, SS with S
- Remove any Hs
- Finally compare both texts
To simplify the above 4 steps I have written a small VBA UDF (User Defined Function) that takes a text parameter and performs the above 4 steps.
Function SimpleText(thisTxt As String) As String
' this function generates a simple text from input text that
' can be used for fuzzy search
thisTxt = LCase(thisTxt)
thisTxt = Replace(thisTxt, "a", "")
thisTxt = Replace(thisTxt, "e", "")
thisTxt = Replace(thisTxt, "i", "")
thisTxt = Replace(thisTxt, "o", "")
thisTxt = Replace(thisTxt, "u", "")
thisTxt = Replace(thisTxt, "ph", "f")
thisTxt = Replace(thisTxt, "z", "g")
thisTxt = Replace(thisTxt, "ck", "k")
thisTxt = Replace(thisTxt, "w", "v")
thisTxt = Replace(thisTxt, "j", "g")
thisTxt = Replace(thisTxt, "ll", "l")
thisTxt = Replace(thisTxt, "ss", "s")
thisTxt = Replace(thisTxt, "h", "")
SimpleText = thisTxt
End Function
The above code can be used to perform fuzzy text searches or searches on unclean data. Of course, the above substitution rules are what I find good enough. Feel free to define additional rules as per your needs so that your fuzzy searches work even better.
If you are looking for generating SOUNDEX codes for excel strings you can use this excel soundex UDF. Soundex codes are phonetic codes generated for words based on how they sound, thus 2 words sounding similar (for eg. excess, access) would have same soundex code. You can use these codes to perform fuzzy searches.
More on text processing using excel:
13 Responses to “Using pivot tables to find out non performing customers”
To avoid the helper column and the macro, I would transpose the data into the format shown above (Name, Year, Sales). Now I can show more than one year, I can summarize - I can do many more things with it. ASAP Utilities (http://www.asap-utilities.com) has a new experimental feature that can easily transpose the table into the correct format. Much easier in my opinion.
David
Of course with alternative data structure, we can easily setup a slicer based solution so that everything works like clockwork with even less work.
David, I was just about to post the same!
In Contextures site, I remember there's a post on how to do that. Clearly, the way data is layed out on the very beginning is critical to get the best results, and even you may thinkg the original layout is the best way, it is clearly not. And that kind of mistakes are the ones I love ! because it teaches and trains you to avoid them, and how to think on the data structure the next time.
Eventually, you get to that place when you "see" the structure on the moment the client tells you the request, and then, you realized you had an ephiphany, that glorious moment when data is no longer a mistery to you!!!
Rgds,
Chandoo,
If the goal is to see the list of customers who have not business from yearX, I would change the helper column formula to :
=IF(selYear="all",sum(C4:M4),sum(offset(C4:M4,,selyear-2002,1,columns(C4:M4)-selyear+2002)))This formula will sum the sales from Selected Year to 2012.
JMarc
If you are already using a helper column and the combox box runs a macro after it changes, why not just adjust the macro and filter the source data?
Regards
I gotta say, it seems like you are giving 10 answers to 10 questions when your client REALLY wants to know is: "What is the last year "this" customer row had a non-zero Sales QTY?... You're missing the forest for the trees...
Change the helper column to:
=IFERROR(INDEX(tblSales[[#Headers],[Customer name]:[Sales 2012]],0,MATCH(9.99999999999999E+307,tblSales[[#This Row],[Customer name]:[Sales 2012]],1)),"NO SALES")
And yes, since I'm matching off of them for value, I would change the headers to straight "2002" instead of "Sales 2002" but you sort the table on the helper column and then and there you can answer all of your questions.
Hi thanks for this. Just can't figure out how you get the combo box to control the pivot table. Can you please advise?
Cheers
@Kevin.. You are welcome. To insert a combo box, go to Developer ribbon > Insert > form controls > combo box.
For more on various form controls and how to use them, please read this: http://chandoo.org/wp/2011/03/30/form-controls/
Thanks Chandoo. But I know how to insert a combobox, I was more referring to how does in control the year in the pivot table? Or is this obvious? I note that if I select the Selected Year from the PivotTable Field List it says "the field has no itens" whereas this would normally allow you to change the year??
Thanks again
worked it out thanks...
when =data!Q2 changes it changes the value in column N:N and then when you do a refreshall the pivottable vlaues get updated
Still not sure why PivotTable Field List says “the field has no itens"?? I created my own pivot table and could not repeat that.
Hi, I put the sales data in range(F5:P19) and added a column D with the title 'Last sales in year'. After that, in column D for each customer, the simple formula
=2000+MATCH(1000000,E5:P5)
will provide the last year in which that particular customer had any sales, which can than easily be managed by autofilter.
Somewhat longer but perhaps a bit more solid (with the column titles in row 4):
=RIGHT(INDEX($F$4:$P$19,1,MATCH(1000000,F5:P5)),4)
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