Excel Bar Graph Showing Blank Value And Its Header - excel

I’m making a bar graph listing the amount of candidates per interview status. Ex: 1st Phase, 2 Hired,7 3rd Round, 4 etc., I have cases where some columns do not have any candidates within the current phase (Offer accepted, 0 or blank).
I made the bar graph using a range of all my headers (status) and the values (# of candidates) beneath the headers. How would I go about making my graph not display these blank values headers?
I can’t just not add the unused headers, as it is a dynamic array, pulling data from a separate table. Every time an input of a candidate and their status in the interviewing process it updates the values in my range for the bar graph.
The issue isn’t that the chart isn’t bypassing blanks but rather it is still using the header in my range when the value beneath the header is blank. Is it even possible to fix this?
Reference Photo

You can use name manager with the Offset function to create a dynamic range. This talks you through it
https://excelchamps.com/excel-charts/dynamic-chart-range/
He uses COUNTA, but I have done this with countif - I don't know which will be better for your situation
=OFFSET(Dropdowns!$K$17,0,0,COUNTIF(Dropdowns!$L$17:$L$21,">1")*1,1)

Related

Auto populate a table based from datas from another table

this is the another version of my first question and I hope I can best explain my problem this time.
From the Table 1, I want to auto populate Table 2 based on this conditions and criteria (below)
From the example, I basically have 3 initial criteria, ON CALL, AVAILABLE, and BREAK
Now for the conditions, I want all Agents from status ON CALL, AVAILABLE, BREAK from Table 1 to be populated on Table 2 (optional: If possible, I wanted only to show agents that HAS a duration of 4 minutes and above from each status). My problem is I always refresh TABLE 1 so I can get an updated data. My goal here is to monitor our agents their current Status and Running Duration, and from that I only need to check on the table 2 so I would see right away who has the highest running duration from each status to be called out.
I only tried MAXIFS function but my problem with it, I can only show 1 result from each status.
What I wanted is to fully populate Table 2 from the data on Table 1. If this is possible with ROW function that would be great, because what I really wanted is a clean Table, and it should only load data if the criteria is met.
Thank you
Something you may be interested in doing is utilizing HSTACK. I am not sure how you are currently obtaining the Agents name in the adjacent column to the results but this would populate both the Agent along with the Duration.
=HSTACK(INDEX(A:C,MATCH(SORT(FILTER(C:C,(C:C>=TIMEVALUE("00:04:00"))*(B:B=H2),""),1,1),C:C,0),1),TEXT(SORT(FILTER(C:C,(C:C>=TIMEVALUE("00:04:00"))*(B:B=H2),""),1,1),"[h]:mm:ss"))
This formula checks Table 1 for any Agent with the status referenced in H2 (Available) that also has a time greater than or equal to 4 mins. It then sorts the results in ascending order and populates the Agent Name that is associated with it. It is dynamic and will produce a table like the following:
Just update the formula to check for "On Call" and "BreaK" as desired for the other two.
UPDATE:
As for conditional formatting, this is utilizing the custom formula posted in the comments. If the formatting of the times are of [h]:mm:ss then you would be looking to do something like this. Notice the 2 cells are highlighted for being between 4 mins and 5 mins.
This is an array solution that spill all the results at once. We use a user LAMBDA function GET to avoid repetition of the same calculation using as input parameter the status (s). The formula works for durations in time format or in text format with a minor modification. On cell E2 put the following formula for durations in time format:
=LET(GET, LAMBDA(s, FILTER(HSTACK(A:A, C:C), (B:B=s)
* IFERROR(C:C >= TIME(0,4,0), FALSE))),
IFERROR(HSTACK(GET("ON CALL"), GET("Available"), GET("Break")),""))
Here is the output:
For durations as text in hh:mm:ss format just replace: C:C >= TIME(0,4,0) with TIMEVALUE(C:C) >= TIME(0,4,0).
The GET function is reused to generate the result for each status. The last IFERROR call is used to remove #N/A values generated by HSTACK when the column doesn't have the maximum number of rows of the output.
The first IFERROR is used to treat the case when the value is not numeric, such has the header. This is because we are using the entire column as input range. Using entire columns produce more concise formulas with less maintenance effort, but it is less efficient, unless you have a good reason to have an open range. If you want to use a specific range instead for the data of the table, then you can remove it and update the ranges accordingly.

Match and Conditional Formatting from Matrix Table

I am looking for some decent help with my matrix table, and is there a good or best approach to properly match dependent instances in certain matrix using drop downs.
This picture represents my matrix table (Picture 1):
As you can see there are a lot of instances, but horizontally and vertically they got the same number of "headers". Those "1`s" are representing not compatibility in my case but lets call it simply "match". That is on one sheet that is gonna be populated with some new values from time to time.
On another sheet which is actually sheet for showing the data and their compatibility possibilities is equipped with drop downs. There you got "Groups (Group1, Group2...)" in a sense of main parts and "dependent groups (AA1, BB2..)" as small components that are part of main parts. To avoid misunderstanding here you have explanations, I used for the sake of this example fictional values:
Groups aka. Main Parts
Dependent groups aka. components
As you can see beneath, is my fictional table but exactly the same concept as I should use in my real case.
I PUT AN EXPLANATION IN THE PICTURE 2 SO YOU CAN FOLLOW ALONG AND SEE EXACTLY WHERE/WHAT I DID!
What I used firstly there are =match functions, one for vertical position (A3) and one for horizontal (B4). This boolean row is done using =or(index) but reffering to the match positions as you can see. And from there I should use true/false for coloring my group boxes in a case compatibility is possible - thats all the science.
So, my question is if there is another approach to this problem? As you can see I have 3 different rows of functions at one place, or imagine if I will have more "groups" that can rise in many more rows and calculations.
Picture 2
EDITED:
This is screenshot of the original sheet, I just hid some rows that were with Infos that is reason the number is not consistent. As you can see it is almost the same as dummy example I provided above. Underneath every "box" you got three rows of calculations as I mentioned before. The two times number "2" that you see here is the position of some value that I found using =match function, one is for horizontal and another for vertical lookup. In this case it is model type, 070FX is position 2, 100FX is 3 and 200FX is 4th position in the matrix table, and so on for all the other groups. And those groups (Model, Endpoint, Gas sensor...) are defined separately on another sheet where I had to make unique list and dependent list so I can reference those to my drop down list.
EDIT Nr 4! So this formula I used for true/false:
=SUMPRODUCT(('0359-matrix'!$A$2:$A$101=F10)*(('0359-matrix'!$B$1:$CW$1=$B$10)+('0359-matrix'!$B$1:$CW$1=$C$10)+('0359-matrix'!$B$1:$CW$1=$D$10)+('0359-matrix'!$B$1:$CW$1=$E$10)+('0359-matrix'!$B$1:$CW$1=$F$10)+('0359-matrix'!$B$1:$CW$1=$G$10)+('0359-matrix'!$B$1:$CW$1=$H$10)+('0359-matrix'!$B$1:$CW$1=$I$10)+('0359-matrix'!$B$1:$CW$1=$J$10)+('0359-matrix'!$B$1:$CW$1=$K$10)+('0359-matrix'!$B$1:$CW$1=$L$10)+('0359-matrix'!$B$1:$CW$1=$M$10)+('0359-matrix'!$B$1:$CW$1=$N$10)+('0359-matrix'!$B$1:$CW$1=$O$10)+('0359-matrix'!$B$1:$CW$1=$P$10)+('0359-matrix'!$B$1:$CW$1=$Q$10)+('0359-matrix'!$B$1:$CW$1=F13)+('0359-matrix'!$B$1:$CW$1=G13)+('0359-matrix'!$B$1:$CW$1=H13)+('0359-matrix'!$B$1:$CW$1=I13)+('0359-matrix'!$B$1:$CW$1=J13))*'0359-matrix'!$B$2:$CW$101)>0
I copied only last part, or when it starts from second row..Because it is too long to write whole funciton - it cuts down automatically.
('0359-matrix'!$B$1:$CW$1=$Q$10)+('0359-matrix'!$B$1:$CW$1=$B$13)+('0359-matrix'!$B$1:$CW$1=$C$13)+('0359-matrix'!$B$1:$CW$1=$D$13)+('0359-matrix'!$B$1:$CW$1=$E$13)+('0359-matrix'!$B$1:$CW$1=$F$13))*'0359-matrix'!$B$2:$CW$101)>0
But on marked cells I am getting the same results: B22 - F22 has the same as B21 - F21 (boolean) what shouldnt be like that but to follow color, green is False, it has to be something with an array reference.
Checkout the following. A1 to E5 is the matrix that shows which pieces are incompatible (=1). The others have to be empty or 0.
In cell I8 I used the following formula (and copied it down up to I11):
=SUMPRODUCT(($A$2:$A$5=H8)*(($B$1:$E$1=$H$8)+($B$1:$E$1=$H$9)+($B$1:$E$1=$H$10)+($B$1:$E$1=$H$11))*$B$2:$E$5)
The formula result shows you the amount of incompatibilities a part has. Eg AA1 has one incompatibility with BB2 but BB2 is incompatible with 2 AA1 and CC3.
To get the TRUE/FALSE use the same formula and append >0: like =SUMPRODUCT(…)>0
For any additinonal "group" (Model, Endpoint, …) you need to add another +($B$1:$E$1=$H$12) where $B$1:$E$1 points to your matrix data and $H$12 to your selected group value.
Overview of the formula ranges:
Note that this kind of calculation can only tell the amount of incompatibilites a part has but not the names of the parts that are incompatible.
Edited horizontal version
Formula in the selected cell is
=SUMPRODUCT(($A$2:$A$5=G8)*(($B$1:$E$1=$G$8)+($B$1:$E$1=$H$8)+($B$1:$E$1=$I$8)+($B$1:$E$1=$J$8))*$B$2:$E$5)
you can pull it to the right.

Update Excel ListObject header names without breaking pivots

I have an Excel sheet with a very wide table on it. Due to developer friendlyness I'd like to use a certain style of column header naming (much like proper Hungarian notation), where I suffix each header name with "column type" tags. This allows me to easily spot where e.g. apples and oranges are compared. There are also pivot table reports based on this table.
An example to illustrate this: say you have 2 monetary columns, column A being expressed in another currency than column B. The model should thus never combine them without first applying appropriate exchange rates. To spot this I name these columns e.g. Earned - Cur1 and Saved - Cur2. Any calculation like =[#[Earned - Cur1]] + [#[Saved - Cur2]] is illegal, but due to the tags this can be picked up easily in an audit. I have several such tag groups in use already, and they already prevented some errors creeping in.
However...
The file also needs to be distributed to lots of not-so-savvy end users, and they need to fill in this table and refer to some of the outcome columns. Most intermediate columns we already hide, but the column names are now far from being user-friendly (like: fill out Actual - NK/Q1/EC/%, please?).
And this needs to run in Excel 2010.
What are my options?
Option 1
Add an extra row above the table, putting human readable names in there, and just hide the table header row. This works, but not the users can't sort and filter the table anymore, so that's a no-go.
Option 2
Augment option 1 by prepending a newline to each column name, and make the table header row 1 character high. The header cells would still be there to drive sorting and filtering and the users have human readable names in the row above. The actual header cells would appear like 'empty' buttons. Could work, but then the complex formulas become unreadable due to all the newlines from the column names all over the place.
Option 3
Add a macro that switches the headers in the table by alternative headers in another row above the table. The macro should be ran just before sending out the file to the users, and ran again when they return them filled in and all. I happily coded this option into the file, and it works wonderfully! But then I realized this (and thus option 2 as well) breaks all the derived pivot tables, since Excel links the data by the names used in the table - update the name, and that section of the pivot will be dropped...
I'd really like the option of having our development-oriented column names in there when we ourselves work with the file, but being able to switch out the headers when needed. And of course without rebuilding all the pivots after each such switch.
An opening here would be that pivots seem to only drop the columns once they're refreshed. I could use this to update the header names, then do some magic on the pivots to remap their fields, and only then refresh them, but it seems there's no way from within VBA to accomplish that (PivotField.SourceName is read only).
Hopefully someone can think of an alternative, or am I SOL? I'm totally open to other workarounds.
Workaround 1
Insert null-terminating characters in the header names such that they do not show normally in the formulas, but do not show in the table header row. If only it were that simple though... Turns out Excel throws up from a =Char(0)&"abc", and things like =Char(8)&"abc" (tab anyone?) give Unicode replacement characters when pasted into a header cell... (?)
Workaround 2
A last resort seems to be to unzip the excel file, and plough through the xml data to update everything in one go there, then rezip the file. But this code also needs to be executed by less skilled users, and I see too many ifs and buts to make me feel safe using this setup.
Workaround 3
For now I just use a variation on option 2; I have some VBA that 'empties' the header cells instead of prepending a newline to them. By 'emptying' I mean setting the font size to 1, subscript, non-bold, and then make the font color identical to the background color, followed by setting it's row height to the default 14.5. The cryptic names do leak out however; column header cell drop down arrows for sorting&filtering show the cryptic name, as well as the pivot field settings and of course the formula bar when you just click such a cell. But I guess it's the best I can do?
And then again I'm probably just perfectionizing this thing faaar to much :) But from this point on it's about the challenge!
Make sure you Tick the Box "Add this data to the DataModel" when creating your pivot(s)
AFAIK when your Pivots are connected to the Datamodel instead of directly to the Range/Table you can change your column-names in the Table and your Pivot will stay fine. You could even use other names in your Pivot.

How to Differentiate a Data from a Column/Header in an Excel File

I hope someone can help me come up with an algorithm.
Im still very new with Apache POI and I was assigned to come up with an algorithm on how to read a template (Excel) and extract the headers/column names from the data itself.
The following must be taken into account:
There can be multiple headers/column names in just one sheet of an Excel file.
Headers can be horizontal AND/OR vertical in nature. This means that there could be a mixture of vertical and horizontal headers in one sheet.
Headers dont necessarily have to be at the very first row of the file. There could be introductions or banner images there.
The system must allow ANY kind of Excel format, so there is no control over the formatting of the cells, the naming convention, etc.
Some headers are alphanumeric in nature, which means it also contains numbers.
Some cells are merged to make room for a specific header.
Any ideas and suggestions are very much welcome. Just let me know if you have further clarifications.
(I know nothing about Apache, but some about Excel Interop working)
If the sheets to be detected are yours, I'd recomend NAMING those header cells. (To name a cell in Excel, there's a field at the top left of the screen, where normally the cell coordinates appear (like "A1" or "B2" and so...). Type a name in that place, and you will be able to identify that cell via code by it's name. ( 'Worksheet.Range("Name")' is where you get those cells via code)
To manage names, go to "Insert - Names" or "Formulas - Name manager", depending on what version of excel.
(Personally, I never work with sheets via code without naming headers, then I use "Offset" to get the data cells corresponding to those headers - This allows me to freely edit the sheet later without breaking the code)
If the sheets aren't yours, then, you'll need to find out the extents of the data. (Last row and last column)
Then check for the first line that contains all columns filled, none of them blank. That's a probable horizontal header.
As well as check for the first columns that contains all lines filled. That's a probable vertical header.
You could, as well, search for completely blank lines and/or columns to find headers that are AFTER some data, in case of sheets containing multiple horizontal headers, or vertical.
You could use some formatting properties (Range.Interior or Range.Font for examples) of those cells to identify if they are headers (usually headers have different format, color, borders and so on).
If you're sure there's no numeric header, I mean, all headers contains text, check for the type of data in the cells. If all are strings, header probability increases.
Even so, that's a tricky thing to do, if sheets don't follow some pattern, once in a while one of them can deceive your code and bring false results. I'd recommend, if alowed, to add a human verification to confirm the results after the proccess is done.
The solution to this problem involves taking away two of these freedoms. Such constraints applied will make this a tractable problem. Most of such freedoms come from overcautious thinking.
The freedoms are given as quotes below:-
Headers can be horizontal AND/OR vertical in nature. This means that there could be a mixture of vertical and horizontal headers in one sheet.
Typically, vertical headers are not used in Excel Files where there is a need to programmatically detect headers. As the primary, most common and sometimes the only reason for such detection is to upload/transform the tabular data.
Funny things happen when vertical headers are introduced:
They become Labels of Forms. This implies that such forms are used for data entry rather than storage. The data from such forms is stored in horizontal/columnar headers and rowwise/vertical records of data . Thus obviating the need for Upload/Transformation of the data entry sheet.
Excel is designed to have only horizontal headers. Vertical Headers cease to have autofilter support.
Even when Vertical Headers are present, a top horizontal header row can still be introduced to mark the headers themselves as descriptions / categories.
Staying true, to the core need for autodetection of headers, we can state that once our requirement states that Headers can be placed only in a horizontal alignment, the solution becomes slightly more tractable but not fully so.
Some cells are merged to make room for a specific header.
Merging cells is poison and anathema to the entire reason for transformation/upload of data. This is a pill I steadfastly have refused to take in my entire career with Excel & SQL jugglery. You may kindly merge all that you want to for all I care, however thee shall not pass into my beloved SQL Server.
For aforementioned reasons of prejudice and ill-will towards all mergers and mergees alike. I'd respectfully suggest that you too take this course.
Solution
Staying true to the above requirements after taking away the 2 freedoms. The pseudo algorithm (solution) is to
Take a sample of say c x r Excel Rows. For eg: 200 x 201 rows and columns
Find the counts of non-empty cells using an inbuilt formula like COUNTA whose contents have a non-zero length. The Count of such non-empty cells in each row is maintained as a data structure.
The type of data ie:- Number, Date, String should also be maintained in the above data structure capable of expressing the following:
Row# 22 contains
30 non-empty cells of which
28 are alphanumeric,
1 is a Date and
1 is a Number.
The First specific row that contains the maximum number of such non empty cells with the maximum number of strings should very likely be the header row.
Converting all of the above to a specific algorithm in any given language should be a deliciously occupying task for any young developer in their prime.

Chart always complains about invalid references - Excel 2007

I made a XY plot that shows points from one data set in two different colors, depending on a set of conditions. I achieved this by making the source table three columns instead of two. First column is the X. Second column is Y is one set of conditions apply, third column is Y is the other set of conditions apply. So the second and third columns have formulas like this in them, respectively:
=IF(ConditionApplies,YValue,"")
=IF(ConditionApplies,"",YValue)
(So the graph actually has two series, each of which is not a contiguous block of numbers - each is interspersed with "nothing")
When I make a change that affects the ConditionApplies, the table reacts properly. Then I switch to the chart (on a different sheet) and it always says: "A formula in this worksheet contains one or more invalid references...". Click OK.
The chart itself always looks the way I would expect, with two different sets of points according to the Conditions I devised. If I inspect the data source fields, all the references are intact and proper.
Basically everything works, I would just like to avoid this annoying pop-up.
Had the same problem. Deleted a data column and the chart that referenced it kept complaining.
Solution was to move the chart to its own page. then copy the chart and put it back into worksheet.
Hope it helps.
I 100% understand everything you've said here and, on the surface, it sounds like it's not any kind of bug. It seems like you are actually referencing something you shouldn't. If that's, in fact, the case that's obviously something you want to fix.
My first guess would be to look at your "ConditionApplies" formulas. Under certain cases, would they create invalid references (referencing data of the wrong type, dividing by zero, circular references, etc.). The most common cause of problems like that would be dragging formulas but not having the "$" signs in the appropriate places. So your cell references change when you expected they'd stay the same.
For example:
=SUM(A1:G25)
should be something like the following to prevent the column and row from incrementing when dragged:
=SUM($A$1:$G$25)
Recommendation
Look at the "ConditionApplies" formulas (or better yet, post them here) and aggressively place $ where ever they don't break things. Then "re-drag" your new formulas, updating the previous ones.
There is a microsoft KB 931389! about this problem with status "Confirmed, not fixed".
In my situation with chart and two series collection problem solved by adding a code to delete all seriesCollection before adding new data:
While Sheets(3).ChartObjects(1).Chart.SeriesCollection.Count > 0
Sheets(3).ChartObjects(1).Chart.SeriesCollection(Sheets(3).ChartObjects(1).Chart.SeriesCollection.Coun t).Delete
Wend

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