The Excel 2019 functions min(), max(), MinA(), and MaxA() don't work on non-numeric arguments. A StackOverflow answer gave a formula for performing the max and min operations on text values:
{=index(A2:A6, match(0, CountIf(A2:A6, ">" & A2:A6), 0))}
for max, with min being the same with ">" changed to "<", and where {...} means an array formula entered with Ctrl-Shft-Enter.
This works well, but I've found a strange behavior in it. If the given range includes blank cells (i.e., empty, i.e., containing nothing) at the end of the range or inside the range, it works fine, but if it includes blanks at the beginning of the range, the formula returns 0:
To complicate matters further, if the blank cells are replaced with empty strings, ="", then the above behavior is the same, except that the one with the empty string at the beginning becomes empty instead of 0.
What is going on here? Why does this formula work with blanks or empty strings at the end or inside the range, but not at the beginning?
This is a disadvantage of COUNTIF. While =A1>B1 will get FALSE and =B1>A1 will get TRUE because an empty cell is not greater than A but A is greater than empty, in COUNTIF blank ("") or empty will never be count. If you do =COUNTIF(A1:H1,">"&A1) you get 0. So nothing counts as to be greater than the empty cell A1.
This is because of the usage of text concatenation in COUNTIF. =COUNTIF(A1:H1,">"&A1) will become =COUNTIF(A1:H1,">") which counts how much values are greater than nothing. That counts 0.
In array context the COUNTIF(A1:H1,">"&A1:H1) gets {0,5,0,4,3,2,0,1} and so MATCH(0;{0,5,0,4,3,2,0,1},0) gets 1. Then INDEX(A1:H1,1) gets A1 which is empty. So the Formula shows 0 like =A1 also would do.
You would see this when using Evaluate Formula in Excel.
One could append a space behind the seach criteria in COUNTIF. So empty or blank would be handled like a space. And to each other cell value simply a space gets appended, what not should be problematic here.
{=INDEX(A1:H1,MATCH(0,COUNTIF(A1:H1,">"&A1:H1&" "),0))}
should work.
Since COUNTIF is able using asterisk (*) used as the wildcard character to match any character, we also could append * instead of the space.
{=INDEX(A1:H1,MATCH(0,COUNTIF(A1:H1,">"&A1:H1&"*"),0))}
Simply try what fits better.
Related
I am trying to lookup values based on two simple criterias.
Here is my formula:
{=TEXTJOIN(". ";TRUE;IF(F1=A2:A6;IF(F2=B2:B6;C2:C6;"");""))}
However, I get 0 in the middle of the text join. How can I ignore values in Text when it is actually empty or blank and get expected value of One. Two. Three. Five instead of One. Two. Three. 0. Five, where cell B5 is ignored and blank.
It's completely logical. It's just not as you intended it to work. Both IF conditions are TRUE and the next thing you tell the formula to return C2:C6 values. Therefore the IF returns a zero (you should use the evaluate formulas option to see what's going on), and therefore no longer an empty cell in a range, but a zero in an array. The TRUE parameter in the TEXTJOIN is therefor no longer helping you. To overcome this you could try:
=TEXTJOIN(". ",TRUE,IF((A2:A6=F1)*(B2:B6=F2)*(C2:C6<>""),C2:C6,""))
Note: It's an array formula and need to be confirmed through
CtrlShiftEnter
Try using array formula as below to get the desired result. Place the TEXTJOIN inside IF.
=IF(F1=A2:A6, IF(F2=B2:B6, TEXTJOIN(". ", TRUE, C2:C6), ""), "")
=(Countifs(B:B;”*”;F:F;”<>*1”))
Why doesn't this work?
I want to count all the rows in the sheet, except the ones that has a number that ends with 1 in column F. It just count all the rows, even the ones in column F that ends with 1.
How do I exclude those?
edit
Some more information!
This is a sample of the data:
Could be up to 8000 rows some days. Column B always says "Independent instruction" so I'm using that as a base to count all the rows. Column F contain only numbers, or blank cells (meaning a number will be added later). I still want to count those rows as well (that's blank). It's just the rows that has a number in column F that ends with 1 that I want to exclude!
SUMPRODUCT gives a bit more flexibility for criteria that involve more than straightforward string-matching:
=SUMPRODUCT(--(LEN($B:$B)>0),--(RIGHT($F:$F,1)<>"1"))
The array formula:
{=COUNT(IF((F:F<>"")*(MOD(F:F;10)<>1);F:F))}
will count all non empty cells in the conditions of your question.
Don't forget to press Ctrl+Shift+Enter to place the formula.
Why doesn't this work?
Apart from the fact that you have transcribed it incorrectly (i.e. missing =, and smart quotes ”) the 'F' condition in quotes is a Text value, a formatting issue #BigBen has mentioned in connection with the 'B' values.
You say It just count all the rows so, syntactically corrected, your formula must be working on (a) all 'B's populated (with Text) and (b) all 'F's Numeric. As 1 and "1" are not the same, none of your entries in ColumnF will be excluded by your attempt (none end in "1", though presumably some do end in 1).
#Pspl's A works because its condition (for the 'F's) is based on MOD (applies to Number format values) and #jsheeran's A (my preference) because RIGHT is a string function that returns Text format even from a Number format value.
Put another way, with say 1 in F1, =F1="1" returns FALSE (so =F1<>"1" and =F1<>"*1" return TRUE - that would not suit you) whereas =RIGHT(F1)="1" returns TRUE (or, to suit you, RIGHT(F1)<>"1" returns FALSE).
You can try to use a combination of SUM and IF. Remember to adjust the formula to match your Excel formatting, i.e. replace commas (,) with semicolon (;).
This is an array formula (enter with Ctrl+Shift+Enter)
=SUM(IF(MOD($F$2:$F$25,10)<>1,1,0))
Result (updated with your data set):
When pasting the image into merged cells, the error looks like that:
So you need to make sure the formula is pasted into a single (not merged) cell.
Array formula for values greater than 1000:
=SUM(IF((MOD($F$2:$F$25,10)<>1)*($F$2:$F$25>1000),1,0))
Array formula for values less than 1000:
=SUM(IF((MOD($F$2:$F$25,10)<>1)*($F$2:$F$25<1000),1,0))
Example:
I have two tables, table1 and table2. I execute VLOOKUP function in order to fill in 3 columns from table2 into table1.
For some reason, the formula doesn't work for the first row, and doesn't find the exact match from table2 even though it exists.
I made sure that both columns (for comparison) have the same format (General) and there is no extra spacing. Same conditions also apply for the rest of the records, and it works there properly.
table1 - you can see the missing matches for the first row.
table2 - you can see the match does exist, but it is not reflected in table1.
Is there any other reason why VLOOKUP can't find a match for a specific record?
Try directly evaluating equality for the two cells that you believe are equal, for instance if A2 is the value you are looking up and Sheet2!A100 is the value you think should match try this in a cell:
=(A2=Sheet2!A100)
If that returns false then you know that there is some formatting issue or error in your vlookup.
Also try Formulas / Evaluate Formula ribbon command to step through your vlookup in case that highlights something wrong.
Okay - Here's a doozy of a use-case. VLOOKUP and INDEX-MATCH were returning #N/A for values that were "apparently" equal. Cleaned my data with =TRIM(CLEAN(SUBSTITUTE(A1,CHAR(160)," "))) and that didn't work.
Then, I compared two cells that looked like they had matching values and they evaluated to FALSE (A1=B1 resulted in FALSE).
Then, as a last resort, I code checked each ASCII value for each character in the two cells and I found that the "-" in one cell was different from the "-" in the other cell. The first cell has the ASCII value 63 and the second cell had the ASCII value 45 for what looked like was the same "-". Turns out that 63 is a "short dash" and 45 is your standard dash or minus symbol.
The way to evaluate the ASCII codes for each character in a string is to combine the CODE function with the MID or RIGHT functions after testing the cells for length using the LEN function.
Examples:
LEN(A1) should equal LEN(B1)
For the first character in each cell:
CODE(A1) Code defaults to the first character on the left
CODE(MID(A1,2,1) yields the ASCII for the second character
CODE(MID(A1,3,1) yields the ASCII for the second character
and so on
If you have a lot of characters you can post an integer sequence next to your CODE-MID function and point the position argument to the related integer and just copy down or across
Or
You can look for the weird non-numeric character and just test that one for both cells.
Have observed scenarios like this where direct comparison fails (e.g. formula =A1=B1 resulted in FALSE) and yet length =LEN(A1)=LEN(B1) and letter by letter ASCI comparison (=CODE(A1,1,1), =CODE(A1,2,1), =CODE(A1,3,1), etc.) shows no difference.
What worked was to adjust the format of the lookup value inside the VLOOKUP.
e.g.
=VLOOKUP(A1, ARRAY, COL_NUM, FALSE) -> =VLOOKUP(TEXT(A1, "000"), ARRAY, COL_NUM, FALSE)
Here's an issue I encountered: my VLOOKUP formula returns the correct value (1) if I type in the value-to-look-up (1.016) directly in the formula, shown in cell F54.
However, if I referenced a value in column A as the value-to-look-up, the formula returned #N/A, as shown in cell F55.
(I was actually trying to VLOOKUP the current row's A value plus 0.015, i.e. VLOOKUP(A54+0.015, $A$3:$B$203, 2, FALSE))
Yet if I use the ROUND function, then the VLOOKUP formula works, as shown in F56.
I recently encountered the same issue and resolved it by changing the vlookup formula to =VLOOKUP([value to lookup], [lookup table], [column to return in the lookup table], False). Setting the last input argument to "false" forces Excel vlookup function to perform an exact match.
I'm trying to understand some legacy Excel file (it works, but I would really like to understand how/why it's working).
There is a sheet for data input (input sheet)and some code that is called to process data in the input sheet. I found out that number of rows in the input sheet is determined using a Lookup formula like this:
=LOOKUP(2;1/('Input sheet'!E1:E52863<>"");ROW(A:A))
"E" column contains names for import items and column is NOT sorted
"A" column does not contain anything special - I can replace it with B, C or whatever column and it does not affect the formula's outcome
According to what I have found about Lookup behaviour: •If the LOOKUP function can not find an exact match, it chooses the largest value in the lookup_range that is less than or equal to the value.
What does this ^-1 operation to the specified range? If E(x) is not empty -> it should turn into 1, but if it is empty - then it would be 1/0 -> that should produce #DIV/0! error...
1/('Input sheet'!E1:E52863<>"")
The outcome is the same, if I replace 2 with any positive number (ok, tried only some, but it looks like this is the case). If I change lookup value to 0, then I get #N/A error -> •If the value is smaller than all of the values in the lookup_range, then the LOOKUP function will return #N/A
I am stuck... can anyone shed some light?
LOOKUP has the rare ability to ignore errors. Conducting the 1/n operation will produce an error every time n is zero. False is the same as zero. So, for your formula, every empty cell produces an error in this calculation. All of those results are put in a vector array in the 2nd argument.
Searching for any positive value (the 1st argument) larger than 1 will result in LOOKUP finding the last non-error value in the above vector.
It also has the nice optional 3rd argument where you can specify the vector of results from which to return the lookup value. This is similar to the INDEX component of the the INDEX/MATCH combo.
In the case of your formula, the 3rd argument is an array that looks like this: {1;2;3;4;5;6;7;8;9;...n} where n is the last row number of the worksheet, which in modern versions of Excel is 1048576.
So LOOKUP returns the value from the vector in the 3rd argument that corresponds to the last non-error (non-blank cell) in the 2nd argument.
Note that this method of determining the last row will ignore cells that have formulas that result in a zero-length string. Such cells look blank but of course they are not. Depending on the situation, this may be precisely what you want. If, on the other hand you want to find the last row in column E that has a formula in it even if it results in a zero-length string, then this will do that:
=MATCH("";'Input sheet'!E:E;)
You might get some idea what the formula is doing (or any other formula) if you apply Evaluate Formula. Though since the principle is the same whether 3 rows or 52863 I'd suggest limiting the range, to speed things up if choosing Evaluate Formula. As usual with trying to explain formulae, it is best to start from the inside and work outwards. This:
'Input Sheet'!E1:E52863<>""
returns an array with a result for every entry in ColumnE from Row1 to Row52863. Since it is a comparison (<> does not equal) the result is Boolean - ie TRUE (not empty) or FALSE (is empty). So if only the first half of E1 to E52863 is populated, the result is {TRUE;TRUE;TRUE; ... and a LOT more TRUE; ... and FALSE ... and a LOT more ;FALSE and finally }.
Working outwards, the next step is to divide this array into 1. In arithmetic operations Boolean TRUE is treated as 1 and FALSE as 0, so the resultant array is {1;1;1; ... and a LOT more 1; ... and #DIV/0!... and a LOT more ;#DIV/0! and finally }.
This then becomes the lookup_vector within which LOOKUP seeks the lookup_value. The lookup_value you show is 2. But the array comprises either 1 or #DIV/0! - so 2 will never be found in it. As you have noticed, that 2 could just as well be 3, or 45 or 123 - anything as long as not a value present in the array.
That (not present) is necessary because LOOKUP stops searching when it finds a match. The fact that there is no match forces it to the end of the (valid) possibilities - ie the last 1. At this point, in my opinion, it would be logical to return "not found" but - I suspect merely a quirk, though very convenient - it returns that 1 - by its index number in the list, ie 52863 if all cells in E1:E52863 are populated.
Although the result_vector (Row(A:A)) is optional for LOOKUP it is required in this usage in effect to fix the start point for the index (effectively Row1, since an entire column). You might change that to say A3:A.. and the result would be the number of the highest populated row number in ColumnE plus 2 (3 -1).
I want to get a formula with COUNTIFS, like
=COUNTIF(A1:A3,"<>"&"")
such that when A1 = 2, A2 = "", A3 = empty, it returns 1.
Notes:
A2 contains an empty string, as the result of a formula. A3 is a blank cell, with no formulas in it.
The formula posted returns 2.
I tried using various numbers of double quotes. I always get 2.
I tried using &CHAR(34)&CHAR(34). I get 2.
The solution posted in How do I get countifs to select all non-blank cells in Excel? is what I tried, it returns 2 (not useful).
The formula would actually be =COUNTIFS(range1,cond1,range2,cond2), that is why I cannot use something like
=ROWS(A1:A3)-COUNTIF(A1:A3,"") or =ROWS(A1:A3)-COUNTBLANK(A1:A3) (see this).
range1 and range2 would come from expressions with INDIRECT, but that is probably not relevant.
I have worked it out with =SUMPRODUCT(--(expression1),--(ISNUMBER(A1:A3))), but I am specifically asking about the possibility of using COUNTIFS. Discrimination of number vs. text (e.g.) is not relevant at this point.
Blank vs. Empty string is the source of "troubles" (see, e.g., this).
Excel itself is somewhat ambiguous with respect to the definition of BLANK. In my example, ISBLANK(A2) returns FALSE, but COUNTBLANK(A2) returns 1.
I am not interested in a user Function.
Use a SUMPRODUCT function that counts the SIGN function of the LEN function of the cell contents.
As per your sample data, A1 has a value, A2 is a zero length string returned by a formula and A3 is truly blank.
The formula in C2 is,
=SUMPRODUCT(SIGN(LEN(A1:A3)))
I was having this exact problem, and I just found out about the "?*" wildcard which searches for any one or more characters, thus avoiding the empty string problem--genius! See Jonathan Gawrych's answer (posted right after the selected answer) here:
Excel Countif Not equal to string length of zero
Not sure if this works for the OP, since it looks like the value in A1 could need to be handled as a number not a string, but it might help anyone else who arrived here looking for a text-parsing solution.
Is using SUM instead of COUNTIFS an option? If so, I've found it to be much more flexible for filtering data sets. For example:
=SUM(IF(NOT(ISBLANK(A1:A3)),IF(NOT(ISTEXT(A1:A3)),1,0),0))
(entered as an array formula). IF(NOT(ISBLANK(x))... filters out non-blanks, then IF(NOT(ISTEXT(x))... filters out non-text. Whatever survives the filters is counted by summing 1. You can add as many filters as necessary. If you wanted to filter out only empty strings but include other text entries you could use a filter like
IF(ISTEXT(x),IF(LEN(x)>0,1,0),0)