Issue with counting events by time range - excel

I have a data export from software that tracks when people swipe access cards to unlock a door. I am trying to find out how many card swipes we get each for each two-hour block.
Something weird is going on. The formula works for only two of the time blocks, even though the first several rows of data show there are other time slots that should be recorded. I have made sure that all the right cells are formatted for the same category (Time) and type (*1:30:55 PM). In the attached screenshot, you can see the formula used.
I think the issue is this was a CSV export from the software, but from there I don't know where to go. Any suggestions? And yes, I tried to do a pivot table first, but when I tried to group the data I got an error message saying something like "Excel can't group on this value."

I found the problem.
I opened the CSV export in a text editor and found there was a leading space before every hour entry. I had to use the search and replace to remove all the extra spaces. After that, I was able to successfully load it into Excel, all of the time entries were right-justified, and my formulas worked.

Related

Excel adds "1/1/1900" to my time duration entries and changes the time as it appears in formula box. Usual fixes not working

I have a column of time durations in an Excel sheet that is destroying my week. I wish I could make a custom hhh:mm format for this column, but I am only allowed to edit this sensitive document on SharePoint and Sharepoint does not support custom formats. Consequently, this is the best I can do for time duration:
Works fine. Most of the rows use this format. But inexplicably, many of the rows have this format instead:
This format difference messes with formulas, and as you can you see in the picture the time "duration" is different in the formula box. The time as it appears on the sheet is correct This format resists all attempts at change, and I've looked up quite a few solutions. Reformatting the whole column has no effect. Copy pasting the values in various ways either retains the problem or produces incorrect results. The Text to Columns fix I've read about in a few places gives me the time as it appears in the formula bar, not the (correct) time as it appears in the sheet.
I am extremely desperate for a fix. I appreciate whatever help you can provide. Please keep in mind that I cannot use custom formats on Sharepoint and I cannot edit this document elsewhere.

Excel: Resetting table based on day

I'm gonna start by saying that I am not that experienced in excel and whatnot but I can manage with some instructions although I ran into a bit of a problem.
So, I've got a timesheet that supposedly tracks the start time, end time, project name and all those things, mind you, not a weekly timesheet, but a daily timesheet. I also have a row above all those columns showing the date and like I said, I'm not that experienced, I resorted to a drop down list with each day and month.
Now, the problem is, instead of copying the same table over and over again in a sheet, I want instead, whenever I change the date from the drop down list, all the cells that include the start time, end time, project name etc. to "reset" and likewise whenever I go back to a date that I've added data previously, to appear.
Is there any way in which I can do this ? Thank you!

Finding the cause of Excel file corruption

I have a feature that downloads things to an xls file using Apache POI. Mostly it works. But on one particular database, the resulting files are corrupted and won't open in Excel. I get the message "We found a problem with some content in 'DownloadFoo.xls'. Do you want us to try to recover as much as we can? If you trust the source of this workbook, click Yes." . Clicking yes results in all the formatting, data validation, etc being stripped out. On the other hand, if I open the file in Open Office Calc and save it, it's fine and can be opened in Excel from then on. (The people who want to use these files aren't allowed to download Open Office Calc, so this is not considered an acceptable workaround.)
I have tried narrowing it down to see which data is causing the problem, but it seems to occur whenever 10 or more items are downloaded, regardless of which items they are. (On other databases, it's fine to download 100+). Excluding some of the columns helps, but they are perfectly innocuous looking columns (and virtually identical to other columns which are fine) so this still hasn't got me to the bottom of it.
Are there any techniques I could use to find out what Excel has a problem with in the corrupted spreadsheets?
I can't make major changes like getting it to download to xlsx instead as this feature is going to be scrapped and replaced with something completely different in the near future, so I'd like to just focus on the problem at hand.
It turns out that the solution to the problem was to reset the data validation lists more often. Quite a lot of the cells in my spreadsheet have data validation. When the data validation lists are longer, they are stored on a hidden sheet. If several cells need the same validation, I try to get them referencing the same list in order to not write out too much stuff on the hidden sheet. However Excel apparently dislikes it when too many cells reference the same list- it's not against the rules as far as I can tell, but it doesn't like it anyway. When I changed it to rewrite the validation lists for every 5 items, it started working.
The reason this database was different was that the items had an unusually high number of subitems, so they occupied a lot of rows even though it didn't seem like many things were being downloaded. Some of the problem columns just had true or false validation rather than using the lists on the hidden sheet, so I don't know what that was about, but resetting the validation lists helped anyway.
This doesn't really answer my question as I never managed to get any information from Excel about what the problem was, or use a particular technique, it was just a series of coincidental findings. I'm putting it here anyway in case anyone else has a similar problem. Also the thing that started me on the right track was finding an old comment when double checking that it doesn't do anything different for over 10 items (it doesn't) in response to Andrew Morton's comment, so thanks Andrew!

Excel Timesheet Matrix to Listed entries

I'm tying to convert a matrix of data into a list of entries. I have found a few solutions that are close but nothing that I can get working completely. My challenges are I need 4 pieces of information from each row and I want it to be automatic. This Solution was close, but I need something That brings an extra two columns with it.I don't want to have to process the data once it's entered into the Grid.
I created something that works but I feel it's clumsy and there has to be a better way to do it. I have added a Sample Time sheet to my Google drive of what I have created. Essentially I enter the work order, description and pay code on the left. The dates are up top and hours hours worked are entered into the grid. I use a few simple formulas to make a list of every grid cell in the format my finance department needs and then bring it back into the main sheet to sort it. I feel this setup is fragile and it requires manual sort every time info is updated.
Can you help me get from the format on the left to the format on the right with 0 steps. The data arrangement on the left can be modified but the data on the right has to be exactly as show. Mostly I don't know what I'm trying to do is called. It took me longer than I care to admit to find the term "matrix to list." All suggestions are welcome.
Thanks
A Screenshot of the excel sheet for when the google drive link stops working.

CountIf acting strange on a lot of data[Excel 2007]

I have a two column set of data, I'm trying to find how many times each value repeats using count.if(). Problem is that my two columns are 783361 rows long, and after like 10 minutes of the loading circle thingy goes away, only the first entries look accurate, however, most of the other data shows the same count, which seemed wrong at first. I then clicked on the formula to see if it didn't drag correctly, turned out it was, and I hit enter. Instantly the count updated to a value that seemed more accurate, I tried this again on random rows, and the same happened. I could go one by one, but again, it's 783361 entries.
Any idea on how to make the evaluations... correct?
If you need any further information I'll happily provide it :^)
If disabled, try enabling Automatic calculations:
Excel 2007:
Office button > Excel options > Formulas > Workbook Calculation > Automatic.
If that does not work, you can try to disable it, close Excel, then open and re-enable it, though that is not likely to work either (worth a shot).
Beyond that, you may want to try reinstalling based on the post I found on Super User by the title of Excel 2007 won't auto-calculate
Please report back and let me know if either of these help.
Apparently almost a million entries to process was too much for my uni's computers, the calculation time would time out somehow and just defalut every cell it hadn't evaluated to the last calculated value.
I figure this is the case because when I got home I tried again and it froze processing for solid 30 minutes and every entry I checked seemed correct. My home computer is an i7 8RAM vs i3 4RAM, so I guess that helps too.
I guess now the question turns into "How to increase calculation time limits in excel?"
Anyways, thanks for the interest everyone, cheers!

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