Last week we learned how to answer questions like, “How many tiles in a room?” using Excel. We learned about CONVERT function and fraction number format settings in Excel.
But why stop at calculation? We can even model a room full of tiles, thanks to Excel’s grid nature.
So today, we will learn how to create a room layout like this using Excel:
If you like the demo, read on to learn.
Step 1: Set up input cells
To model tiles in a room, we need 4 inputs. Lets call them by below names.
- room.length
- room.width
- tile.length
- tile.width
Step 2: Calculate number of tiles required
The basic formula for calculating total tiles required is this:
=ROUNDUP((room.length*room.width)/(tile.length*tile.width), 0)
But this formula yields in an unrealistic solution as we do not want to have fractional tiles everywhere. So, a better way to calculate this is,
=ROUNDUP(room.length / tile.length,0) * ROUNDUP(room.width / tile.width,0)
Although this formula is technically correct, you may save a few tiles if you rotate the them.
That is,
ROUNDUP(room.length / tile.width,0) * ROUNDUP(room.width / tile.length,0) can be smaller than ROUNDUP(room.length / tile.length,0) * ROUNDUP(room.width / tile.width,0) in some cases, as shown in above demo.
So we need a way to flip tile dimensions if that saves us a few bucks. That is done by,
Step 3: Flipping tile dimensions with a switch
Insert a check box and link to a blank cell, say F6.
[Related: How to use a check box in Excel]
Now, using F6 value (either TRUE or FALSE), flip the values of tile.length & tile.width using IF() formula.
Step 4: Create a 100×100 grid
Although you can model the floor plan of entire Buckingham palace in Excel, lets restrict ourselves to rooms of size 100×100.
Select 101 columns and resize them small enough so you can see all of them in a single screen, like 10 pixels wide.
Select 101 rows and adjust their height so that you can see as many of them as possible in a single screen (10 pixels tall should do).
Type running numbers in first column & row. The final grid looks this this:
Step 5: Modeling the room layout using conditional formatting
So we have a big 100×100 grid where we need to draw
- Outer boundary for the room as per room.length & room.width
- Inner tile boundaries as per tile.length & tile.width
Set up conditional formatting rules for room boundary
There are 4 rules required.
- Draw vertical left border if the topmost row = 1
- Draw vertical right border if the topmost row = room.length
- Draw horizontal top border if the left-most column = 1
- Draw horizontal bottom border if the left-most column = room.width
Below, see one of the rules.
You can find other conditional formatting rules in the downloadable workbook.
Step 6: Modeling Tiles using conditional formatting
While we need 4 rules for the room boundary, we just need 2 rules for tile boundaries.
- Draw vertical right border if the topmost row value is divisible by tile.length
- Draw horizontal bottom border if the left-most column value is divisible by tile.width
We do not need rules for vertical left border or horizontal top border because they will be drawn by previous tile.
See one of the rules below:
That’s all. Our room model is ready. Go ahead and see how it looks when tile it.
Download Example Workbook
Click here to download room tiles model workbook and play with it. Examine the conditional formatting rules to understand it better.
Do you apply Conditional Formatting in such creative ways?
I personally think conditional formatting is as good as honey, mangoes or dark chocolate. I love to use a dollop of it in all my Excel recipes.
What about you? Do you use conditional formatting for anything out-of-box 😉 like this? Please share your tips using comments.
Want more? Check out these conditional formatting examples
If you want more on conditional formatting you are in luck. Check out,
- Gantt chart using Excel conditional formatting
- Baby feeding schedule using conditional formatting
- Todo list using Excel conditional formatting
- Making data entry forms awesome with conditional formatting
- Searching data using conditional formatting
- Market segmentation charts with conditional formatting
- More examples on conditional formatting
12 Responses to “29 Excel Formula Tips for all Occasions [and proof that PHD readers truly rock]”
Some great contributions here.
Gotta love the Friday 13th formula 😀
Great tips from you all! Thanks a lot for sharing! bsamson, particularly you helped me on a terribly annoying task. 🙂
(BTW, Chandoo, it's not exactly "Find if a range is normally distributed" what my suggestion does. It checks if two proportions are statistically different. I probably gave you a bad explanation on twitter, but it'd be probably better if you fix it here... 🙂 )
Great compilation Chandoo
For the "Clean your text before you lookup"
=VLOOKUP(CLEAN(TRIM(E20)),F5:G18,2,0)
I would like to share a method to convert a number-stored-as-text before you lookup:
=VLOOKUP(E20+0,F5:G18,2,0)
@Peder, yeah, I loved that formula
@Aires: Sorry, I misunderstood your formula. Corrected the heading now.
@John.. that is a cool tip.
Hey Chandoo,
That p-value formula is really great for a statistics person like me.
What a p-value essentially is, is the probability that the results obtained from a statistical test aren't valid. So for example, if my p value is .05, there's a 5% probability that my results are wrong.
You can play with this if you install the Data Analysis Toolpak (which will perform some statistical tests for you AND provide the P Value.)
Let's say for example I've got two weeks of data (separated into columns) with the number of hours worked per day. I want to find out if the total number of hours I worked in week two were really all the different than week one.
Week1 Week2
10 11
12 9
9 10
7 8
5 8
Go to Data > Data Analysis > T-Test Assuming Unequal Variances > OK
In the Variable 1 Box, select the range of data for week 1.
In the Variable 2 Box, select the range of data for week 2.
Check "Labels"
In the Alpha box, select a value (in percentage terms) for how tolerant you are of error.
.05 is the general standard; that is to say I am willing to accept a 95% level of confidence that my result is accuarate.
Select a range output.
Excel calculates a number of results: Average (mean) for each week's data, etc.
You'll notice however that there are two P Values; one-tail and two-tail. (one tail tests are for > or .05), the number of hours I worked in week two is statistically equivalent to the number of hours I worked in week one.
So here’s a way you might want to use this. You put up a new entry on your blog. You think it’s the best entry ever! So you pull your webstats for this week and compare it to last week. You gather data for each week on the length of time a visitor spends on your website. The question you’re trying to prove statistically is whether there’s an average increase in the amount of time spent on your website this week as compared to last week (as a result of your fancy new blog post). You can run the same statistical test I illustrated above to find out. Incidentally, it matters very little to the stat test whether the quantity of visitors differs or not.
Anyhow, the Data Analysis toolpack doesn't perform a lot of stat tests that folks like me would like to have access to. In those cases I have to either use different software, or write some very complicated mathematical formulas. Having this p-value formula makes my life a LOT easier!
Thanks!
Eric~
Fantastic stuf..One line explanation is cool.
Thanks to all the contributors
OS
Take FirstName, MI, LastName in access (you can fix it to work in excel) capitalize first letter of each and lowercase the rest and add ". " if MI exists then same for last name:
Full Name: Format(Left([FirstName],1),">") & Format(Right([FirstName]),Len([FirstName])-1),"") & ". ","") & Format(Left([LastName],1),">") & Format(Right([LastName],Len([LastName])-1),"<")
I teach excel, access, etc etc for a living and i have my access students build this formula one step at a time from the inside out to show how formulas can be made even if it looks complicated. Yes I know I could just do IsNull([MI]) and reverse the order in the Iif() function but the point here is to nest as many functions as possible one by one (also I illustrate how it will fail without the Not() as it is)
Extract the month from a date
The easiest formula for this is =MONTH(a1)
It will return a 1 for January, 2 for February etc.
if in a column we write the value of total person for eg. 10 if we spent 1.33 paise each person then how we get total amount in next column and the result will in round form plzzzzz solve my problem sir................... thank u
@Anjali
If the value 10 is in B2 and 1.33 paise is in C2 the formula in D2 could be =B2*C2
If the values are a column of values you can copy the formula down by copy/paste or drag the small black handle at the bottom right corner of cell D2
kindly share with me new forumulas.
How to convert a figure like 870.70 into 870 but 871.70 into 880 using excel formula ? Please help.