Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with excel

Blind Spot in my Excel Formula Abilities

itsonreserve — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 06:32:55 -0800

Excel Idiot Filter: Is there some simpler way to calculate the averages of the same cell along multiple worksheets? For example, say I'd like to take the total box on every previous worksheet and average it on a final worksheet. It's the same box on every single one, but I can't seem to get it to work. I've tried letting Excel write the formula for me, but after all that clicking it says the formula doesn't work. Can the worksheets be ranged? For example Say I have =AVERAGE('Sep 09 Wk 2'!H20,'Sep 09 Wk 3'!H20,'Sep 09 Wk 4'!H20). Can I write =AVERAGE('Sep 09 Wk 2':'Sep 09 Wk 4'!H20)? Also is there a limit on the number of things you can have in the formula, which could be causing Excel to not understand it, even when I try writing it using clicks?

Word 2007 formatting question

jujube — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:20:50 -0800

How do I keep a particular tab in Word2007 from automatically disappearing? And other Word2007 and Excel 2007 questions inside. Really, I HATE Office 2007. It now takes me multiple steps to do what used to take one click of the mouse. Below are a list of items that I'm hoping folks have answers to.

1) Keeping a particular tab open in Word. Let's say that I want to change the font and change line spacing. I click the home tab, then change the font. Instead of the home tab remaining, it disappears, so I have to click the home tab again before I can change the line spacing. How to leave the tab visible until I click on the body of the document?

2) Permanently change style setting. Whenever I open a new Word document, I want a specific setting (e..g, specific font, size, header style, etc.) to be in effect. Currently, I have to save the setting I want as a "style" option, then click on it every time I open a new document.

3) In Excel 2007, how to single space my cell formatting? Some of my cells are text heavy, and I want them to appear single spaced. The default is double, and can't change it.

Thanks!!

I've just spent 16 hours on a lab. Never again.

vogon_poet — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 18:30:33 -0800

What spreadsheet/graphing software should I use to do physics labs? I am a high-school student, enrolled in the International Baccalaureate program. I'm taking an IB Physics class, and there's a lab component that's pretty substantial. What's worse, my physics teacher has his own very high expectations for labs, and trying to fulfill the standards of both is pretty difficult. Typically the labs are between 50-100 pages, about 60% graphs or charts. There is always too much data to do anything manually and maintain my sanity.

IB has a lot of bizarre niggling requirements for these labs. Every number has to have a unit and uncertainty associated with it (I'm not allowed to just put "+/- .5 V" at the top of a column) and significant figures are vitally important. Indeed, even a single error on one datum will drop me by the IB equivalent of a full letter grade, at least according to my teacher.

So, I would like some spreadsheet/graphing software that can do what I need automatically.

As far as numbers and calculations go:
-- there needs to be a way to associate units and uncertainties to numbers and still use them in calculations
-- calculate while propagating uncertainties
-- perform calculations using the proper numbers of significant figures
-- easily export charts, with units and uncertainties printed next to each number, for insertion into a word-processing document

As far as graphing goes:
-- It needs to be able to handle error-bars on graphs, and perform at least linear regression.

Does anything like this exist? I've looked around for formulas to make Excel work the way I want it to, but most of them are unsatisfactory. I've also tried out R, but I don't have time to program all this myself, and R seems pretty difficult to learn anyway.

Plan B is amphetamines

Reverse my percentage?

JulianDay — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 19:25:28 -0800

How do you find a number that minus a percentage of itself is a certain number? What would be the formula (in a spreadsheet like pages.app) to find that 100 - 20% = 80, if you only know the percentage and the result (in this example 20% and 80)

I've tried googling this but I don't think I know the name or term of what I'm looking for, reverse percentage doesn't seem right...

Need help making an excel formula

FireStyle — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 23:25:56 -0800

Please bear with me, as I'm having difficulty wording this question. I'm trying to use excel to add values that belong to a list. Basically, the list has a entry, each entry has a value, and I want to total the values of like entries. ex)

A - 100
A- 30
A - 50
B - 25
B - 60
C - 40
C - 60

how do a create a formula that will tell excel to sum all values that are labeled A and so on?

If the formula works, then in a different cell, I should see:
A - 180
B - 85
C - 100

I hope this makes sense. Thanks much

Type, copy, click, paste, type, copy, click...

SNWidget — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:56:57 -0800

I've been manually sending out emails about test results and then entering them into a database - is there a way to automate so part of this process? I'm a teaching assistant for a graduate department. Students in various classes come into the resource room in which I work and take a variety of tests that are required to pass their classes. They take the tests, we grade them, enter the results into a spreadsheet, and then send them an e-mail saying if they've passed of failed.

Since it's the end of the semester, I got caught doing about 30 of these today. Copying and pasting the same form letter over and over into an Outlook window after having entered these all into an Excel spreadsheet seemed stupid. I know there's gotta be a way to automate this process at least partially - can you help me with it?

Here's the general gist of it all.

Student takes test from one of 4 classes.

Results (a pass or fail) is entered into an excel spreadsheet. Each class has it's own spreadsheet. Each student needs to take multiple tests, and they can be taken in any order at any time during the semester. If the student fails, they must retake the test. They get an e-mail for every time they take a test, up to 3 times. Students can take multiple tests at once as well.

After the student takes the test, they are graded and entered into the database. The student's name, test type, and whether they passed or not, and the date is recorded. And e-mail is then sent to them with a list of which tests they took, and whether they passed or failed the tests. There's a bit more info on the letter, but that's all standard form stuff.

Which parts of this can be automated? And how do I do it? I know about mail merge, but because of the continual nature of this, I'm having trouble seeing how to make this work. If not, is this just something I'm going to have to do manually?

I have available a PC, Excel, and Microsoft Outlook.

Slow typing in Excel 2008 and unexplained network traffic

lbergstr — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 01:06:18 -0800

Why would Excel 2008 cause a lot of network traffic while typing in a cell? After using Excel 2008 for a few months, recently I've experienced sluggishness when typing in cells. These are really serious slowdowns, the display can take 5 seconds to catch up to my typing. It comes and goes; haven't been able to discern a pattern here.

However I use MenuMeters and during slowdowns, I've noticed that network traffic spikes when I'm typing in Excel - say 150KB down, 33KB up.

I'm not editing a document on a network drive, or even an external drive. Happens whether or not I have any external drives connected.

I'm connected to a local network via wifi, and through that to the Internet - but our external connection tops out around 25KB down.

Any ideas?

Using Excel 2008 SP1 on 10.5.8.

Need help developing a Excel VBA Macro to Vaildate data entered into a textbox

complience — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:03:11 -0800

Need help developing a Excel VBA Macro to Vaildate data entered into a textbox I am collecting data from users in a Excel spreadsheet. To ensure all the required fields are filled out, I have created a userform that loads on opening of the spread sheet.

Currently there are three Textboxes a command button writes the data to the sheet and highlights in pink any not filledout.

I need it to only write to the sheet ONLY when all the textboxes are filled out after being called by a cmd button - If it not satisifed the blank fields are highlighted in pink.

I also need a higher level of data vaildation on the two other text boxes.

Textbox2 must contain an email address (checking for hyperlinked content is probably the easiest way to vaildate for this)

Textbox3 must contain only a 9 digit numerical number

Any VBA gurus - please help

Option Explicit
Dim y As Long
Const pink = 16761855
Private Sub CommandButton1_Click()
Dim EmptyBoxes As Integer
EmptyBoxes = EmptyBoxes + check(TextBox1)
EmptyBoxes = EmptyBoxes + check(TextBox2)
EmptyBoxes = EmptyBoxes + check(TextBox3)
If EmptyBoxes = 0 Then
ActiveWorkbook.Save
Unload Me
End If
End Sub
Function check(tb As Control)
Dim res As Integer
res = 0
If tb.Text = vbNullString Then
res = 1
tb.BackColor = pink
Else
Cells(y, CLng(Right(tb.Name, 1))) = tb
End If
check = res
End Function
Private Sub UserForm_Activate()
y = [A1].End(xlDown).Row + 1
End Sub

Is it possible to do a global change-style in Excel?

min — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:41:44 -0800

Is it possible to automate a citation style change on an entire column in Excel, or do I need to do this by hand? I have a list of approximately 600 articles in an Excel document. There is a column for each field in the cite (author, title, journal, etc). I need to change the citation style. Currently, most cites are Smith, A. B., Jones, C. D., and a few are Smith Ann B, Jones Cathy D. I need to covert them to Smith AB, Jones CD. Most titles (but not all) are in the format Where the wild things are: a great book, but they need to be formatted as Where the Wild Things are: A great book. (Think PubMed style, with proper nouns and the word after a colon capitalized.) Is it possible to do some sort of global change citation style, or do I need to do all this by hand? Is this the kind of thing you can do with a Macro? I haven't ever set one up before. Unfortunately, importing into EndNote or a similar program that will automatically change format style isn't an option.

I'm using Excel 2001 on a Mac. I'm not a programmer. I'm looking for something that will do this relatively quickly, because I could do it by hand in a (very boring) few hours--if the solution involves hours of learning it's probably not that practical.

Save me from my excel hell

TheBones — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:51:54 -0800

Another GD excel/csv filter I have been having issues with formatting in csv files. I save excel files as csv files. Sometimes I have to go back into the csv files and edit the data.

One of the columns has anywhere from 2 to 7 digit numbers in it. I need to make sure all values in that column are 7 digits. I use the text formula to do it, =text(ad2,"0000000"), take the data and transfer it into that column as values.

However, when I save the data and go back into the file, the numbers have reverted to their other forms in that column.

I make sure to change the column to text and save it that way.

It would be really easy to make the changes in the excel file, however, I have to break the excel file into multiple excel files so I would have to make the changes in the excel file and reseparate into their respective files.

I have also tried reverting each file to excel, making the changes and then re-saving them as csv's, but I still seem to be having issues.

Please help!

MacgyverFilter: link sharing using MS Office

Monday, stony Monday — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:23:17 -0800

Macgyver IT: I want my team to use something like del.icio.us to share links. But since this is ask.metafilter, I can't use the obvious right answer. I need to make something like it myself, using ~~bubblegum and string~~ the MS Office 2000 suite and my knowledge of VB. What would be my best approach? This is clearly insane, but I want to try (please don't ask why I can't use something reasonable -- I just can't). I don't need the full del.icio.us, just links and tags. I'm also okay with having only one person at a time able to add a link to the dB, and everyone sharing a big ball of links.

I've thought about using an Excel file, but I don't know if there's a reasonable way to do that, or what that way would be. Could that work, or should I bite the bullet and go for Access? Is there a feature hidden somewhere (in Outlook?) that I'm overlooking?

excel gets my goat sometimes

jak68 — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:50:40 -0800

excel filter: why wont it let me have header rows below row 1? I dont use excel much; but whenever I do, I'm always amazed at why its virtually impossible to label any rows or columns.

You'd think that labelling rows or columns would be one of the most basic things that one should be able to do in a spreadsheet program especially if one wants to keep one's rows and columns logical.

I know that you can label row 1 and column 1 and then exclude them when you sort. (And even that it seems to me they didnt make it automatic, you have to go into advanced sort window and click on 'i have header rows' or something.)

But what if you have 5 rows of numbers, and then you want to add more label rows?

Is there basically no way to do that? COuldnt they, for pete's sake, just give an option to make any row a "comment" row that isnt included in sorting and calculations? Like a "REM" statement in programming, to be able to right click a row and say "ignore this row in sorting and calculation"? Why hasnt MS done that yet? It seems so obvious and so useful a function.

Or is there a way to do that and I'm just dumb?

Hide rows in excel if two cells match.

onich — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:19:17 -0800

Please help me create an excel macro to hide rows given a certain criteria. I have an Excel 2003 spreadsheet with 2 columns of amounts (i.e. A and B) then a column with a date (C) and a bunch of other columns in between that I don't care about. Please help me create a macro to hide the row if columns A & B for that row are equal AND if C is less than or equal to a date I specify in a constant cell ($A$1).

Also, I need this to happen only if A, B or C are not null.

Salamat po.

-6+6*6 = 25. No, that isn't right...

andrewcilento — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:48:42 -0800

Any Excel whizzes out there? I'm having a problem that I just know is going to have a head-slappingly simple solution, but I still can't figure it out. Okay, so here's the skinny:

I have an Excel spreadsheet I've been using to keep track of the various debts I owe. One of those debts is a personal loan I took out thinking that it would be a debt consolidation loan...another topic for another time. What I want to have Excel do is give me the difference of $19,268.11 (the total loan amount including interest) and x (the number of payments remaining on the loan multiplied by the amount I have to pay each month). The formula bar for that cell looks like this:

=19,268.11-((60-C2)*(321.2))

C2 is x, which at this moment is 10. The trouble is, it's not coming out right. If I do just the part to the right of the minus sign, I get 16060; so far so good. When I include 19,268.11, though, it comes out to 3208.11. What gives?

Lightning round: how would I have the difference display itself as dollars and cents rather than just a number?

How can I take a picture, organize and create a URL for each SKU in a mini-warehouse?

schindyguy — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:35:51 -0800

How can I take a picture, organize and create a URL for each SKU in a mini-warehouse? I have about 150 SKUs that I have organized into a master inventory list in excel. I added a column labeled "Picture URL" where I hope I can put a shareable/accessible URL for someone to view/download to another computer.

I was thinking a good way would be to use Evernote for the iPhone and then title each one the SKU of the item. But Evernote doesn't create a URL that I can use/paste into that field. It just lets me see the picture in a browser within their own system...in other words, I dont end up with http://evernote.com/sample-sku.jpg

I was hoping there was a mobile phone app solution (blackberry or iphone) because I dont care about the pic quality and thinking it would automate the uploading to the web portion...

The other option would be to use a digital camera, but then I would have to look at the picture and then rename the pictures with the correct sku name and then upload it on my server...probably the longest way.

Excel: Incrementing Formula Row Copied Across Columns

Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 13:38:36 -0800

Excel question: I need a row number to automatically increment as I copy a formula horizontally across columns. Sample spreadsheet downloadable here, or viewable as a Google Doc here. Further details inside. To elaborate, the formula in question starts in Column T. In T2, the formula compares Node 1 to itself - hence the zero. In T2, it compares Node 1 to Node 2, in T3, Node 1 to Node 3, and so on. Column U does the same thing, except it compares Node 2 to Node 1, Node 2 to Node 2, Node 2 to Node 3, and so on. I want to copy out my formula so that all 50 nodes in the matrix are filled in, in this manner.

The formula increments properly when copied vertically. Take a look at the representative portion of the formula right after the ABS in cell T2: ($C$2-$C2). The formula stays "anchored" on Node 1 via the $C$2. The second part, $C2, increments as you copy it down, to $C3, $C4 and so on. (The same is true for the rest of the formula - it just goes ($D$2-$D2), ($E$2-$E2) and so on.)

Now take a look at Column U. The "anchor" changes from $C$2 to $C$3. That's because Node 2 is now the basis for comparison. In Column V, the anchor changes to $C$4, because Node 3 is the basis for comparison.

The thing is, the anchors in Columns U and V were updated by hand. That is to say, if you copy the formula in Column T one cell to the right, nothing increments. I realize that this is "proper" Excel behavior - when you copy formulas horizontally, generally only the column will increment. But I would really love a way to force the row number of the anchor to automatically increment as I copy the formula to the right. (Note that the anchor has to retain the $ before the row number because when I copy the formula down, that portion of the formula must stay fixed.)

Please let me know if you need any further clarifications. And if you have any suggestions, I would be very grateful. Thank you.

Rates of success?

rollick — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:46:36 -0800

Statistics question: is it possible to test sets of cumulative data for significant differences in rate? I have three cumulative percentage graphs, measuring the germination rates of three different seed types. Is there a way to compare them and see if there are any statistically significant differences?

The seed types were planted in triplicate, on three dishes each (nine overall). Every day for the past few weeks I've observed how many seeds on each dish have begun germinating -- so for an individual dish I would have " Day 1: 0 ... Day 7: 14 ... Day 14: 29" etc, with each day's score a cumulative total. (There are 100 seeds on each dish, so it works as a percentage rate as well)

In Excel, I've graphed the average germination rates of the replicates, for a graph that resembles this one. (with three lines plotted, and x-axis = time in days, y-axis = percent germinated).

So is there a way to compare these different rates statistically? I can use Excel, Minitab, SPSS, and R.

How to return every Nth value in a column in Excel?

malcommc — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:45:34 -0800

I am trying to pull values from one sheet into another master sheet for daily trending. The OFFSET function works for a single cell, but I can't figure out how to copy that formula to the rest of the column. Here's an example.
The total sheet uses dates and revenue. The values come from second sheet, every 5th cell in column D, starting with D5.

Date Revenue
10/19/09 (Second Sheet, D5)
10/20/09 (Second Sheet, D10)
10/21/09 (Second Sheet, D15)
10/22/09 (Second Sheet, D20)

I literally have hundreds of these, so picking each value would be tedious and prone to error. Any help is appreciated.

Evaluate the meaning of a string in Excel.

nickerbocker — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:24:21 -0800

How do I store a string in one cell in Excel and interpret it as a (or for a) function in another cell? More info inside. Simplified example:

Lets say I have random numbers in A1 through A15. In B1 I have the string "A1:A15". In B2, I want it to perform the MAX() function on whatever range is specified in B1. So if I change the string is B1 to something else, say "A10:A15", the maximum calculated in B2 is also reprocessed for the different set of data.

For some reason, I thought it would be something along the lines of:
=MAX(EVAL(B1))

But that is not the case. I seem to remember doing something similar before.

Thanks for your input!

Conditional Formula Selection in Excel

Bugbread — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 04:21:42 -0800

How can I create an Excel worksheet which uses something like VLOOKUP (or anything which works in a similarish way) not to pull values, but formulas? So, here's the situation: I'm trying to make a single billing Excel sheet where I can keep track of invoicing multiple clients. However, due to peculiarities of my industry (translation), the formula used for billing each client is different. Some round up to the nearest 100 words, some round normally to the nearest 100 (49 rounds to 0, 51 rounds to 100), some are billed X per 100 words, some are paid Y per 100 words.

I can make any one of those formulas fine, independently, but I'd like to have all clients on the same page, and use some sort of formula where I'd pick the clients name, enter the number of words in the translation, and Excel would look up in a table or something to determine that, for example, the formula for Company A is ROUNDUP(A2/100,0)*100*B2 but the formula for Company B is ROUND(A2/100,0)*100*B17 or the like.

Is there any way to do this without nesting IF clauses (which would become troublesome the more clients I got)?

A Program to Help Me?

moonroof — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:13:00 -0800

I started a new internship, and I'm wondering if there is some way to automate copying the non-profit information from this website. So, I'm the new intern, and I've been charged with the task of copying the information from this website and copying the information from each member into an Excel spreadsheet. I need the name of the organization, contact name, their title, phone number, email, and the website address.

It's a little slow-going, and I'm happy to do it by hand, but I wonder if there isn't some way to automate the process, like with a program? My supervisor would be thrilled, but I don't know anything about programming. Before I post a request on a site like rentacoder, I need to know, is this even possible?

Help me with an Excel AVERAGEIFS problem

blahblahblah — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:34:00 -0800

Excel help with AVERAGEIFS: I need to generate an average figure per row, but the cells to be averaged need to meet two criteria. I have two sheets. To keep it simple, assume one sheet has a start year and a company id number. The other has a list of products made by each company, the year they were released, the company id number, and the revenue for each product.

For each row on the first sheet, I want the average revenue for all products produced by that company id number on or before the start year.

To put it another way, I want to average all revenues in the second sheet where the company id numbers are equal to the company id in the first row, and the release year is less than the start year.

I have tried AVERAGEIFS(revene1:revenueX,companyid1:companyidX,"=sheet1!companyidN",year1:yearX,"
Any hints appreciated

How can I force Excel 2007 to save as a single html file?

thisisnotbruce — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:49:34 -0800

How can I force Excel 2007 to save as a single html file? At work we use an application (Tririga) which can take uploaded excel spreadsheets in html format in order to perform calculations.

Previous versions of excel would output a single html document, which worked beautifully. Excel 2007 now outputs a folder structure with the base html file using frame references for the actual content.

/Report.htm
/Report_files/sheet001.htm
/Report_files/tabstrip.htm
/Report_files/filelist.xml

These spreadsheets are maintained by end users, so an optimal solution would be finding some hidden setting in Excel rather than a multistep process.

Thanks in advance for any help.

How to set Excel2003 to automaticall include file name and path on printed spreadsheets

Wroksie — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 02:21:16 -0800

How can I set up Excel 2003 to automatically include the file name and path on every spreadsheet when printed? I have been tasked with figuring this out and setting it up every computer in the office (as the only person here who doesn't poke the actual screen when asked to press 'start', I am the default IT guru - yes, it's that bad).
Anyway, I used this tutorial to figure out how to do this using a macro, and it works great - but I have to go in and add the code to every spreadsheet, which is a pain, and which I doubt my coworkers would be willing or able to do. What I need is a way to set the default template to automatically include the file name and path on every spreadsheet without the user having to do anything or even think about it. I would prefer it be in the footer so that it only shows on printed copies, as per the above tutorial, and not included in an actual cell, but at this point I will take what I can get.

Know any good VBA tutorials?

Librarygeek — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 08:11:55 -0800

Can you reccommend VBA tutorials, particularly for MS Excel 2007? I used to know a tad of VBA that I used in the context of Access databases. However, I need to program some macros to help analyze our search analytics reports. I am floundering a bit -- so I've decided I need to go back to basics and more throroughly learn VBA. I checked previous questions and either they addressed a specific issue or the links provided in the answers are now dead :( I did look at the granddaddy of Excel discussions on the Blue. From there I checked out the Excel Nexus and VB Users pages. Those will be great when I'm beyond the basics, but they not at a tutorial level. I've consulted Google but there are tons of returns and I'm not sure how to tell which are any good.
Thanks for any leads!