We all know that VLOOKUP can find first match and return the results. But what if you want to VLOOKUP multiple matches? Use this simple trick instead.
Multiple matches in Excel lookups
The problem is simple as illustrated below. Say you have a bunch of dates & locations. You want to find out corresponding date(s) for a location. If you use either VLOOKUP or INDEX+MATCH, you just get the first date, but you want them all.
In new version of Excel (2019), you can use awesome formulas like FILTER() to do exactly this, but most of us are still stuck in older version of Excel. So how to get all the matches?
The trick – Use TEXTJOIN…
TEXTJOIN is a text combining function available on Excel 365. We can it to solve our multiple matches problem.
Let’s say our data is in a table named plan. We want to lookup the location in cell G7 and return all matching dates.
We can use below TEXTJOIN formula (you must press Ctrl+Shift+Enter) to get result as this is an array formula.
=TEXTJOIN(", ",TRUE, IF(plan[Location]=G7,
TEXT(plan[Date],"dddd dd-mmm"),""))
How this multiple match formula works?
Let’s go from inside out.
- IF(plan[Location]=G7 this part checks every location in the plan table and returns a bunch of TRUE or FALSE values. The end result would be an array like this. {FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE; TRUE;TRUE;TRUE; FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE}
- TEXT(plan[Date], “dddd dd-mmm”) this part takes all the dates in plan table and converts them to dddd dd-mmm format (ie 18/05/2019 becomes Saturday 18-May). The end result would be another array of dates formatted.
- IF(plan[Location]=G7, TEXT(plan[Date],”dddd dd-mmm”),””) this entire IF formula results in either a bunch of formatted dates or blanks, based on whether plan[Location] matches G7 or not. So we get something like this. {“”;””;””;””;””;””;””;””;”Saturday 18-May”;”Sunday 19-May”;”Monday 20-May“;””;””;””;””;””;””;””;””}
- TEXTJOIN(“, “,TRUE, IF()) this is the final part of the puzzle. TEXTJOIN takes individual bits of the array in #3 and combines them with delimiter , (comma space) but ignores any blanks (TRUE as second parameter). The final result is one text that goes like – Saturday 18-May, Sunday 19-May, Monday 20-May
Why bother with TEXT(plan[Date], “dddd dd-mmm”)?
If you don’t use TEXT() to convert your dates, you get something like this instead – 43603, 43604, 43605. This is because Excel dates are really just numbers. So when you use them in any formula you just get the underlying number value. This is why TEXT() formula is so helpful.
Related: Top 10 tips for working with Excel date & time values.
Still confused? Multiple Matches in Excel – Trick
Not sure how all of this works? Check out below video to understand this trick in detail. You can also watch this on my YouTube channel.
Download VLOOKUP Multiple Matches workbook
I made an example workbook with this formula technique. Click here to download or see this in action online here.
HELP! I don’t have TEXTJOIN()
As mentioned earlier, TEXTJOIN is available in Excel 365 or 2019 + only. So if you are using an older version of Excel, you should use one of the below techniques to get multiple matches.
And yeah, while you are polishing your lookup saw, why not also read these..
How do you multiple match?
Do you use TEXTJOIN() or something else? Or do you just give up after first match? Please share your lookup tricks in the comments box.
30 Responses to “Rescue oddly shaped data – Battle between Formulas, VBA and Power Query”
Nice use of Power Query! Power Query is simply awesome! But somehow a lot of people are punishing themselves by not using it (not learning it).
An imperfect 4th approach for consideration... no codes at all...
Select myrange.
Go to Special --> Blank
Delete Cell --> Shift cell left
90% done... now we just need to move the data of 2nd column to the bottom of 1st column
Of course... Power Query is the best.
Cheers,
There is another way but it involves multiple steps:
Copy the values in column E, move the cursor to F5, Paste Special with Skip Blanks, OK
Copy the values in column D, move the cursor to F8, Paste Special with Skip Blanks, OK
And so on.
This works perfectly, albeit a little clumsily apart from the values in B17 and C16, which can be moved with simple copy and paste
Power Query Forever! I do not know how I survived for so long without knowing and using this tool, I can not recommend it to my colleagues, but by the way they prefer to suffer to learn.
My congratulations here from Brazil.
I rolled my eyes when I saw that data
Using decimal places is a nice trick to order data, thanks for that
And tweaking the first formula a bit, you can use OFFSET instead of INDIRECT
=OFFSET($A$1, MIN(IF(myrange, ROW(myrange)), ROWS(A$1:A1))-1, RIGHT(TEXT(MIN(IF(myrange, ROW(myrange) + COLUMN(myrange)*0.00001), ROWS(A$1:A1)), ".00000"), 5)-1)
Tried the above formula with the downloaded oddly shaped data file and I could not get it to work. I get #value without ctrl+shift+enter, and #ref with ctrl+shift+enter.
Sorry, it was SMALL, not MIN.
Add with CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER.
Thank you for your formula. Like the indirect formula I tested this one in older versions of EXCEL and it worked without ALTERATION in EXCEL 95. Very impressive.
Too complicated
Use =Sum to summarize all the sells to the left and Bobs Your Uncle
@Bertie... I am afraid that won't work when you have more than one value in a row.
I tested this formula in versions of Excel all the way back to Excel 95
=IF(ISERROR(INDIRECT("R"&SUBSTITUTE(TEXT(SMALL(IF(MyRange"",ROW(MyRange)+COLUMN(MyRange)*0.00001),ROWS(A$1:A9)),"00000.00000"),".","C"),FALSE)),"",(INDIRECT("R"&SUBSTITUTE(TEXT(SMALL(IF(MyRange"",ROW(MyRange)+COLUMN(MyRange)*0.00001),ROWS(A$1:A9)),"00000.00000"),".","C"),FALSE)))
So there are multiple ways of cleaning up messy data by formulas.
Wow.. Excel 95. Who knew people still use that. But as you have shown, Excel has all these beautiful and powerful functions for 23 years. It has data sciency stuff before DS was even a thing.
I had a problem with pasting the formula in the original post.
Formula should be: =IF(ISERROR(INDIRECT("R"&SUBSTITUTE(TEXT(SMALL(IF(myrange"",ROW(myrange)+COLUMN(myrange)*0.00001),ROWS(A$1:A1)),"00000.00000"),".","C"),FALSE)),"",(INDIRECT("R"&SUBSTITUTE(TEXT(SMALL(IF(myrange"",ROW(myrange)+COLUMN(myrange)*0.00001),ROWS(A$1:A1)),"00000.00000"),".","C"),FALSE)))
EXCEL even in a 16 bit version, is a very robust and capable program.
I don't like the VBA code. If you have a blank row in MyRange, the last entry in the range is doubled up in the paste.here range.
Not really. The macro is writing one cell at a time from paste.here. You have to clean the range before, which I was too lazy to write. But a line like Range(range("paste.here"), range("paste.here").end(xldown)).clearcontents should do the trick.
Adding Range(range("paste.here"), range("paste.here").end(xldown)).clearcontents fixed the problem.
for step split column by delimiter i am not getting option of split into rows or columns. Can you help me in this
Thanks Chandoo for promoting Power Query.
To simplify further, you can "Unpivot Columns" instead of right click on the newly created column and split it by comma in to rows in step 3 of Power Query.
i used
=LOOKUP(10000,B5:F5)
and got the answers. I just plagiarized this formula somewhere and use it, maybe you can explain why it works.
Regards
@Johan... I am not sure if the formula works correctly. When I tested it with the sample data in this post, it showed #N/As in two cells. Essentially, it will only give first value in each row. So if a row has multiple values, then subsequent values are missed. LOOKUP() function goes thru a list and finds the first value that is less than or equal to the input - in this case 10000 in B5:F5.
I have the need to convert pdf's to excel on occasion and they often come out a mess like this. I have used:
Cell G2 =COUNT(myrange)
Cell G3 =IFERROR(IF(G2-1<1,"",G2-1),"") copied down to G100
Cell H2 =IFERROR(LARGE(myrange,G2),"") copied down to H100
Waouw...
=IFERROR(INDIRECT("R" & SUBSTITUTE(TEXT(SMALL(IF(myrange "", ROW(myrange) + COLUMN(myrange)*0.00001),
ROWS(A$1:A1)), "00000.00000"), ".", "C"), FALSE), "")
but CTRL Shift Enter with {} before and after 🙂 😀
Here's a way with pivot table
https://www.bookkempt.com/2018/02/aligning-non-contiguous-data.html
This is brilliant. Bookmarked 🙂
Another possibility.
This assumes that you have a row index 'k' to use in the SMALL function and a column index 'h' to identify the columns of 'myRange'.
If you define 'coord' to refer to
=k+h/10 [assuming h<10]
then it will be possible to recover values later based upon location within 'myRange'. The formula 'nb' that identifies non-blanks by coordinates is given by
= SMALL( IF(myRange"", coord), k )
Finally, to unpick the pieces
= INDEX( myRange, INT(nb), 10*MOD(nb, 1) )
Whilst I am here and making trouble the PQ solution is also a tad over-complicated. All that is needed is to unpivot the entire table and remove the Attribute column.
The advanced editor would show
let
Source = Excel.CurrentWorkbook(){[Name="myRange"]}[Content],
#"Unpivoted Columns" = Table.UnpivotOtherColumns(Source, {}, "Attribute", "Value"),
#"Removed Columns" = Table.RemoveColumns(#"Unpivoted Columns",{"Attribute"})
in
#"Removed Columns"
1.fill the blank cells with 0
2.the requested column value=sum of those mess number column
but this can be used in only one column has value
Chandoo
And if we use the formula SEARCH (100000000, B5: F5)
JC
Another approach with Power Query, it will still work if the number of columns changed:
let
Source = Excel.CurrentWorkbook(){[Name="myrange"]}[Content],
#"Added Custom" = Table.AddColumn(Source, "List", each Record.ToList(_)),
#"Removed Other Columns" = Table.SelectColumns(#"Added Custom",{"List"}),
#"Expanded LIst" = Table.ExpandListColumn(#"Removed Other Columns", "List"),
#"Filtered Rows" = Table.SelectRows(#"Expanded LIst", each ([List] null))
in
#"Filtered Rows"
Cool idea to use Record.ToList as added column. Thanks for sharing this.
Nowadays, you can just use TOCOL on Excel 2024, MS 365, and Web Excel. It has a parameter to ignore blanks/errors/both.