Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with spreadsheets

No, this isn't about EVE Online.

256 — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 05:59:22 -0800

I need help taming a very long list of numbers into useful tabulated data, in Excel. I have an Excel spreadsheet. It consists of a single column with 8,784 rows. Each cell contains a number. That number represents a data value corresponding to an hour from 2012. The data values are in order, starting at midnight Jan 1, and going to midnight Dec 31.

I need to turn this mess into a 12x24 table representing average hourly values for each month. My Excel-fu is weak.

The best way I currently know to do this is to just type a series of very long functions like: =Average(A1, A25, A49,A73 ...)

This is obviously not the right way. So, what's the right way?

Correlating names between two spreadsheets

mammary16 — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 08:35:02 -0800

I need to correlate two spreadsheets which relate to the same group of people. The name data is messy, however, and I'm having a hard time matching the names. Hello! I've got a bit of a puzzle here and I need some expert help.

I'm trying to correlate data from two different spreadsheets. The context of this data is that it was collected as part of a very complex international project. Both reports are showing student results from different online courses.

There are about 3,000 students.

I need to correlate the data in order to make comparisons of performance for each student in the different courses.

However, the data collection was done separately, so names were written down in many different ways. It's a classic problem, I'm sure.

Here are some examples of the data issues:

An example:
Spreadsheet 1 Spreadsheet 2
1. Mary Williams mary williams
2. John Paul Gomez John Gomez
3. Marisa Lpez Marisa López
4. Sara Lpez Sara Lopez
5. Xin Wei Wei Xin

Problem 1: Case. I can make everything lower case. So I think I've figured that out.
Problem 2: Middle names. I can drop out middle names.
Problem 3: Characters not displaying correctly (I copied these into HTML file, opened with browser, and then copy-pasted. If you know a more elegant way to do this, let me know!)
Problem 4: Special characters were often not used at all in the data collection for Spreadsheet 2. So I'll need to find a way to convert all accented characters into plain characters. What's the best way to do that?
Problem 5: Surnames and first names flipped (usually with China). It's not consistent, however.

I've just listed a bunch of data issues, and would love advice on each of those. Even better, does anybody know a one-stop solution for this problem of correlating names from different databases/spreadsheets? I'm new to working with messy data like this so any general tips/resources would also be very helpful.

I don't know Visual Basic but I can use Python very well.

Thanks for your help!

Help me EXCEL at my new job. (Yes, I went for the obvious one.)

synecdoche — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 20:31:04 -0800

What books or websites should I look at if I want to master Excel? I started a new job in a totally different field a couple of months ago. We use Excel a lot—not just as a standard tabulating spreadsheet, but to build tools using formulas and multiple tabs and all kinds of things. Right now with the stuff I am doing, the spreadsheets and everything are all developed for me. However, down the road I may have to assemble one myself and I'd like to be prepared for that should it ever come to pass.

These aren't just financial sheets; sometimes they involve decision-making matrices and that kind of thing (which often include financial data, but not exclusively).

What should I read?

Excel colour schemes are making me go blind

Katemonkey — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 01:51:19 -0800

How do I permanently change the colour scheme in Excel (2010) so that I don't keep on going blind due to other people's spreadsheets? I work with a ridiculous amount of spreadsheets, and my boss likes to colour entire rows to get his point across. Red means the products are deleted, yellow means they're new, etc.

Unfortunately, we're talking #FF0000 Red and #FFFF00 Yellow in huge swaths across a spreadsheet and...ow. My eyes. Here's a rough mocked-up example, so that you can see my pain.

I know I can change the colour scheme for each individual spreadsheet, but we're talking dozens of spreadsheets and, often, I'm just quickly looking at them to check one item.

So how do I set up my Excel so that, no matter what opens, the colours Excel reads as "Red" and "Yellow" are much more...sedate? Is this even possible?

iTunes Viewing Options for a Table or Spreadsheet?

Beardman — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 09:38:10 -0800

What Mac program should I use for a chart to keep track of my upcoming job applications? You know how in iTunes, you can see the same music library listed alphabetically by artist, or by album, or by genre, and so on? I'd like to be able to view the same bunch of jobs listed by deadline, or by ad number, or alphabetically by requirements. The idea is that I'd like to just enter information under headings like "Ad #", "Job Name", "App Type", "Deadline", and then be able to click those headings to view them listed in a number of different orders. E.g.:

Viewed by Ad #:

Ad #34...Crappy University...Paper App...Oct. 31
Ad #40...Alright University...Online App...Nov. 15
Ad #56...Swanky University...Online App...Nov. 5

Viewed by Deadline:

Ad #34...Crappy University...Paper App...Oct. 31
Ad #56...Swanky University...Online App...Nov. 5
Ad #40...Alright University...Online App...Nov. 15

Viewed by Job Name:

Ad #40...Alright University...Online App...Nov. 15
Ad #34...Crappy University...Paper App...Oct. 31
Ad #56...Swanky University...Online App...Nov. 5

...and so on.

Free would be highly preferable. Other info:

- I don't have Numbers from iWork, although maybe that's what I need?

- I have a hard time with Excel, and the cells are generally too small or cut off info that I'd like to see.

- Is there an easy way to do this with Word 2008? (Probably not.)

Thanks!

Excel copy/paste question

xedrik — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 16:53:00 -0800

Probably a simple Excel copy/paste issue... See example workbook. I have a value in cell (E1, in this case), and a formula that references that cell. In the example, that formula in cell E3 is =D3/(1-(E1/100)). I want to copy and paste that formula into a bunch of other cells (a few in my example, but in practice it is hundreds). When I do this, the formula changes to =D3/(1-(E2/100)), =D3/(1-(E3/100)), =D3/(1-(E4/100)), and so on, instead of always staying at E1. This results in a bunch of #VALUE! errors, and depending on how the sheet is laid out, this stair-stepping can sometimes start referencing cells with data in them, producing wildly incorrect results.

So what I'm wanting is when I copy E3 in my example sheet, and paste it into E4 through E8, I want the formula in E4 to say =D4/(1-(E1/100)), and E5 should say =D5/(1-(E1/100)), and E6 should say =D6/(1-(E1/100)), and so on.... the first part changing, but always referencing E1 for the latter part.

Is there a way to make paste do this? Or a better/easier way of accomplishing the same end result? What I don't want is to have rows and rows of the same value (E1's value), just to make the pasting work.

I swear I've done this before, and pretty simply, but for the life of me I can't remember how, and Excel's help is not turning up anything relevant.

Why don't they teach us how to prep the numbers as well as how to crunch them?

smirkette — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 12:08:45 -0800

ExcelFilter: How to combine the data from three spreadsheets into one spreadsheet? (But wait, there's more!) - Data is in three different spreadsheets, reflecting three different instances of data collection
- Each new spreadsheet should append its column contents (maintaining its original column headings) to a “master” spreadsheet
- There is a column that we can use as a unique ID that could function as a primary key (I think?)
- Not all unique IDs are guaranteed to show up in all three spreadsheets (subjects may have missed one or two data collection days).

This is for a relatively small set (N=~150) but I’ll need to do the same thing with a much, much larger dataset in the coming month (N=15k+), so a brute force copy-paste won’t be feasible. I’m sure there’s got to be a smarter way of doing this. I have no database experience, but I can get my hands on Access and teach myself if you can point me to what kinds of topics I should be looking at.

I’ve tried asking around locally without success (still waiting to hear back from the research help folks) and my Google-Fu is failing. Thank you!

Help me become a spreadsheet power user

Busoni — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 14:54:20 -0800

How do I become a spreadsheet power user? And do I have to get Excel to do it? (Or can I stick with LibreOffice/Google Docs?) I'd like to use spreadsheets to create personal budgets, reading lists, sleeping logs, and the like. Especially when it comes to the budget, I feel there must be stuff I'm missing out on, both presentation-wise and math-wise. How can I learn more?

Can Google spreadsheets solve my problem?

goatdog — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 15:54:13 -0800

I have a massive Google spreadsheet containing entry info for a small film festival. I need to be able to produce tailored reports from it that only contain need-to-know info, instead of making people look at the master sheet. Is this possible? If not, what online software should I use? If it is possible, maybe you could point me toward a place I can learn how to do it. "Need-to-know" in this case means that, for example, the hospitality person only has to see what people are coming to the festival, the print traffic person only has to see formats and locations, etc.

Show all formulas.

HeroZero — Sun, 15 May 2011 07:50:29 -0800

I'm an artist. Please help me find a day job that makes use of my bizarre love of spreadsheets. Previously. I was an English teacher for 7 years. I quit recently because I was burnt out. I've been pursuing theater more fully. I got a job working in development for a midsize theater company in Chicago. It's two days a week and the pay is minimal, but I'm learning a ton and having a fantastic time. I've also had some freelance copywriting work to help supplement my tiny income, but it's not steady enough at this point.

So what can my other day job be? I am utterly useless waiting tables. I still love working with kids and have gotten some catch-as-catch-can babysitting gigs, but in my attempts to get nanny jobs I've found that people are generally looking for somebody willing to make a multiyear commitment. Tutoring work has been tough to get.

Here's what I think might be my secret weapon: I've learned, since leaving education and working more with fundraising and box office issues, that I am -- to many of the artsy types with whom I spend my time -- terrifyingly good at spreadsheets. Given the fact that I have always worked in the humanities, this comes as a complete surprise to me. I derive some sort of primeval, lizard-brain pleasure from making an elegant, workable spreadsheet. This amazes me because I was always pretty disorganized as a teacher. I was lousy at sorting hundreds of kids' poorly-labeled hardcopy homework assignments, but I'm great at working with computer files.

What sort of part-time/freelance work could I get/make with this skill? I had the realization (after April 15th) that I should maybe become a tax preparer, but I've heard that the pay is lousy if you're working for H+R Block or the like. Hive mind, do you have any other special snowflake ideas for me?

How do I important the data from hundreds of documents into spreadsheets?

perpetualstroll — Tue, 03 May 2011 11:53:00 -0800

How do I use OCR to scan a standard document into an excel spreadsheet? I have hundreds of reports that have basic fields like, name, address, and columns of information - is there a program or process in which OCR can be used to scan, capture and import the data automatically from hundreds of sheets with the same basic layout into an excel spreadsheet?

How can I edit someone's required google form list to include my unique entry?

gryftir — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 15:14:19 -0800

How can I edit/alter a friend's Google Spreadsheet Form so I can put my own answer in required list items? I have a friend who has created an RSVP form for an event using Google spreadsheets. I don't want to get into specifics, but her entry has a list style form which is required, has no blank option, and doesn't have the correct option for me. IE, imagine a pull down menu with Republican; Democrat; and Independent; I want to put my own "third party" in, or in a few instances leave things blank.

Is it possible to externally edit the form webpage to do this?

Example code and detailed instructions would be very helpful. I've searched online to no avail.

EXCEL Vs. Time Left

TeachTheDead — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 09:37:33 -0800

Excel Question! I have two dates on my spreadsheet. How can I accurately determine (retrieve) the time remaining on a warranty date. This has been a nightmare here at the office and none of us are Excel guru's.

We have a date of instal for something. Lets say the customer has 2 years until that service falls out of warranty. We need Excel to see the
=NOW() - for the current day of course, and the cell that has the date of service, say July 12th 2009. How can we show in the workbook how many months remain until the warranty is expired.

I have tried several variations using the DATEDIF function, but can only, obviously get different forms of the date differences. I need there to be a base of 2 years, 24 months whatever and subtract that from the current date =NOW() to give the customer the final months remaining based on the date of instal/service.

Please help us here, this has to be doable.

We are running Excel 2007

I need to create a website FAST for rapidly changing information

desjardins — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 07:16:51 -0800

I need to slap together a website FAST that contains a map and a (sortable? filterable?) list of Wisconsin-related protest/rally events. I'd really, really like it if people could enter their own events and they'd show up on the map without a lot of intervention on my part. Here's where I'm at right now: I have a Google spreadsheet that I'm letting people request editing rights to. Several times per day I cut and paste the spreadsheet data into a batchgeo map. I have shortened is.gd URLs for both spreadsheet and map, and I'm probably annoying the fuck out of my twitter followers because I'm posting them frequently.

The map and list need to be in one place, and the process needs to be more automated. Events are being created and changing every hour. People are PISSED OFF in Wisconsin, if you hadn't noticed. I can't keep up with it and still pay attention to my real job.

I have a domain name. I have hosting. I know enough HTML and CSS to be dangerous. I don't have to use WYSIWYG editors. I do not know javascript or PHP or whatever the cool kids use these days. I don't even care if it's pretty at this point, I can make it prettier as I have time. Help.

Have paragraphs. Want just the hyperlinks. In Excel.

randomname25 — Wed, 19 May 2010 08:10:57 -0800

Need list of trade publications. Found huge one on Ulrich's web. How can I remove all information except for the (hyperlinked) titles, ideally in a way that keeps the titles on separate lines so I can then paste them into Excel? A custom search on Ulrich's web gave me a list of almost 1,300 English language trade publications, circulation between 50,000 and 9,999,999 (their max). Each publication listing contains additional information (publisher, country, ISSN, start year, status, price). Though it looks sort of like a chart online, I can't highlight by column, and when I copy it into MS Word 2003, I get a sort of paragraph thing. Example below (the [ ] is a checkbox, and the first part (title) is a hyperlink):

[ ] AAII Journal
American Association of Individual Investors
United States
0192-3315
1979
Active
See Full Record
AAP News
[ ] American Academy of Pediatrics
United States
1073-0397
1993
Active
USD 138.0

There are also sometimes little icons between the checkbox and the the title. To go through 1297 publications and remove all the additional information seems a huge waste of time. I'm convinced there's a more efficient way, but I can't figure out what it is and Google hasn't helped.

I thought of pasting it into Excel directly and using macros to remove 6 out of every 7 lines, but it's probably a bad sign that even using "Clear Contents" on the entire sheet does not remove the checkboxes or icons.

Again, the titles are the only hyperlinked text, and I want to keep them on separate lines. The goal is to end with a list of all 1297 titles in an Excel column and nothing else.

Finally, I've tried making a list on Ulrich's web of the titles I want but that format doesn't look any more workable. Does anyone who is familiar with the site know a way to manipulate the data there in a way that would make this easier?

Excel Filter: Search the contents of one cell for the contents of another cell, then replace with the contents of yet another cell? Is it possible?

Salient — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 15:42:55 -0800

I need to search the text in column A for the text in column B, replace it with the text in column C, and return the new complete string to column D. I've Googled. I've read. I've cried. Can you please help me? I know I'm going to kick myself for not knowing this (and for failing at the Googles)...

The sheet is set up as shown below. I need to parse A for B and replace the found string with C, and return the end result to a new column, D. Then I need to apply it to the other 5000 records in the sheet.

----Column A----------Column B----------Column C------Column D
Foo Foo2 Foo3-----------Foo2--------------Foo4--------Foo Foo4 Foo3

I'm really hoping that this is endlessly complicated, so as to save me some personal embarrassment.

Thanks very much for taking the time to look!

I want to turn my Google Docs spreadsheet of a route into something prettier with photos and stats - how to do it easily?

soulbarn — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 14:51:35 -0800

I want to turn my Google Docs spreadsheet of a route into something prettier with photos and stats - how to do it easily? I went on a long urban hike with a bunch of people. We twittered, photographed, and geo-located our way through 40 miles of city streets. I planned the route on a spreadsheet beforehand, broken down turn-by-turn, with landmarks and notes. Afterwards, I downloaded our tweets - which were made at each landmark - as a CSV file and added them to the original spreadsheet, giving us location and exact time info. I also added columns for tweets to us. Now, I want to be able to put the pictures (which are time-stamped and/or geotagged) in, as well as notes and free-form information, like clickable URLS, or additional about the places we passed. I want to make this into an online presentation, or something similar, but I want the ability to retain and remanipulate the raw data so that I can remove fields/columns and use it again, as I would a spreadsheet. I'm a Mac user, and the Bento database program does this well and easily - but that's about all it does well. It can't, won't, and shall not export except as a CSV file. Period. Useless.

Any ideas of a quick and easy front end that can take all this info and make it pretty, while retaining the flexibility I get with a Google spreadsheet?

Excel AVERAGE questions.

FatherDagon — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 12:38:23 -0800

Trying to get some modified AVERAGE results in Excel. Right now I've got a formula in my workbook 'AVERAGE(Data!Z:Z)', pooling turnaround time data from a single column on a different sheet. Most of the values are in the five minute range (3.5, 4.2, 7.1, 5.0, etc), however there are also very occasionally (say 5-10 cells in an array of 3000 or so) values that are closer to 1-2 days (1500 minutes, 2000 minutes, etc).

Is there a way to modify or append the AVERAGE function to either a) weed out values outside of a certain range, or b) get a median average that drops something like the 10 lowest and highest values in the range, or the bottom and top 1%, or something similar?

Concatewhat?

thebazilist — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 08:50:06 -0800

I need to merge two Excel sheets with some common fields, but the most advanced formula I've ever used is Autosum. I have two worksheets. One has a list of people that I've invited to an event. The other has a much larger list of people, including the people on the 1st sheet, which has a field for phone numbers. I'd like to bring the phone numbers from the 2nd sheet into the 1st sheet, but only for the people who are on the 1st sheet. Both sheets have "First Name" and "Last Name."

I've been googling around and have found things about vlookup and concatenating (same thing?). I've never used vlookup before, so I guess I'd need a basic primer in vlookup and/or how to use it in this specific instance to achieve what I want. Unless there's a better solution. I've also read about maybe pulling the two sheets into Access, but I'd rather not have too complicated an end-product since very tech-unsavvy people will need to be using the results.

On both sheets, Last and First name are columns A and B, and phone numbers on the second sheet are columns D, E, and F.

Getting Google Spreadsheets to interpret string as formula

Akeem — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 10:53:28 -0800

I have hundreds of text strings entered through a form in a Google Spreadsheets which look like 4*3 9*2 17*3 22 37*4 52. I can easily substitute " " for "+" and concatenate a "=" in front =4*3+9*2+17*3+22+37*4+52. Now I have a text string which looks like a formula but isn't one. How can I make Google Spreadsheets interpret this string as a formula? These Excel solution don't apply because I'm not always around when someone makes a new form entry.

With =sum(split(A1,"+")) it's possible to interpret a string like 4+9+17+22 and get a correct result.

However =multiply(split(A1,"*")) does not work for 17*3 ("Wrong number of arguments", even though split should create 2 arguments here). So a combination of splits, multiply and sum also fail.

Is there another solution?

How do I unsquish my Google Docs spreadsheet?

mathowie — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 23:49:39 -0800

My Google spreadsheet collapsed itself in the middle somehow. How do I get it back? Here's a screenshot showing that for some odd reason, a worksheet in Google Docs (spreadsheets) jumps from cell 20 to 200 and all my data within the hidden section is gone. I don't know how this happened but I'd like to somehow expand it to restore. How?

Compare and output greater value.

guptaxpn — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 04:57:05 -0800

Spreadsheet question: Display Greater Value? I know this is one of those "you-either-know-it-or-you-don't" situations, and I just don't know. Hokay, so here's ze situation:

There are two columns of numbers, A and B

A1 has a value of 10, and B1 has a value of 15.

What do I type into C1 to compare A1 and B1, and display the greater value of 15?

AutoFilter equivalent in Google Docs Spreadsheets?

Jacqueline — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:28:59 -0800

I want to be able to filter my data in Google Docs Spreadsheets like the Data > Filter > AutoFilter function in Excel 2003. I am fairly familiar with Excel, but still learning my way around Google Docs Spreadsheets. The help file on the filter function confuses me:
http://docs.google.com/support/spreadsheets/bin/answer.py?answer=82712&query=FILTER&searchSyntaxExact=1

I just want to do something like the AutoFilter command. Is that even possible? If not, any suggestions for how to set up alternatives?

Thanks!

I know, I know - I shouldn't even be using Excel!

CXImran — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 11:52:51 -0800

ExcelFilter: How can I create a spreadsheet that automatically copies a certain type of cell from one column to another? So I've got this spreadsheet where I paste a set of values into Columns 'A' and 'B' regularly. Column 'A' has a set of names and Column 'B' has a set of dates.

What I want to do is to be able to paste new data regularly into columns 'A' and 'B', but have columns 'C' and 'D' report only data that was flagged as given in the last 14 days.

I COULD just paste it in the order that I get the data, but unfortunately more often than not the data I'm working with isn't given to me chronologically. What I'd like to do is have all the data dynamically update to the last 14 days so that when I generate a certain graph it only uses the data that I want.

Do any Excel wizards know of good ways to do this?

Sorting Embedded Google Spreadsheets

joemako — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 13:25:13 -0800

I am looking for a way to sort embedded Google Spreadsheets. I am not looking for advanced features or interacting with the data, but ONLY client side sorting. I published a testing spreadsheet
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=po4odZe1pIMzeFaoYQQz6BQ&output=html&gid=0&single=true&range=A1:D11

On http://ask.metafilter.com/89827/How-to-make-spreadsheet-dynamically-sortable-web-table unixrat said he is sure embedded Google Spreadsheets are able to be sorted.

I have seen this can be done with Zoho: http://blogs.zoho.com/sheet/how-to-embed-your-spreadsheet-into-any-webpageblog/, but that solution offers the visitors too many options. If the ability to edit the cell contents was disabled, but still sortable, that would work also.

My thought is I am missing some documentation in the Google Data API, if anyone can point out links that I need to read to be able to add sorting, I would appreciate it.