I've read this forum for many Excel-related issues over the past 3-4 years, always finding answers when needed... but this time, I'm stumped.
I'm trying to use Conditional Formatting based on a formula to highlight values that are out out of range based on a cell that is a defined distance away. Specifically, the cell I will be attempting to format will be 8 cells to the right of the reference cell. (e.g., comparing R13 to J13, where J13 is the reference value). So the "Lower Spec Limit" is automatically generated from column J to Q, and the user inputs results in columns R to Y.
I would like to accomplish this without having 8 formulas, but so far I have been unable to figure out the right combination of AND/OR statements that will allow me to apply a single formula from row R to Y, where R>J, S>K, T>L, etc. are the conditions to be met.
In a nutshell, the formula I was using was basically:
=OR($R13>$J13,$S13>$K13,$T13>$L13)
Within the Conditional Formatting line. Of course, I then realized that this would format the entire affected range when any condition was met. I also tried to consider whether there was even data in the cell yet, but that got to be a messy way to highlight the entire range again anyway.
From other entries on this site, I've found that I need to:
Avoid INDIRECT references (can be unstable)
Potentially use OFFSET (although I'm unfamiliar within Excel formulas, only used in VBA in the past)
There will be other users for this spreadsheet, so that will have to be a condition.
Is this a feasible task, or would I be better off to have the 8 formulas (which will be 16 if I highlight based on "pass" and "fail" criteria)?
Thank you for your help!
Related
Newbie-ish with Excel here. I'm trying to keep things simple for long term ease of use since most at my job don't know much of anything with Excel or anything with VBA.
I'm looking to have a formula count cells containing up to 4 different codes (TRM2-TRM5) out of 32 possible codes. However, the cell these combinations are entered in is not required to be in any specific order.
Such as:
B1 (TRM2, R2, TRM3)
B2 (TRM2, PN1, DC5, TRM4)
B3 (PN1, IPA5c, HW2, TRM5)
B4 (PN1, HW2, R2)
The desired result of the formula is a count of 3
I don't need to count the individual number of times the TRM codes appear. Just the number of cells they appear in a range (such as B1:B99).
I've tried COUNTIFS but quickly discovered I'd have to have a COUNTIFS for each possible combination of the 4 codes.
So far the simplest way is to use multiple instances of conditional formatting that highlights the cells that contain one of the four codes and do a visual count. All the examples I've read don't have multiple values in one cell so I'm not sure how to tackle it.
For those that are curious, the purpose is error reporting for issues missed in an audit.
Thanks for the help!
Given your example, you can do this with a helper column.
Either hard code an array constant with the codes to find, or enter them in separate cells someplace. I did the latter and named that range theCodes.
Use this array formula in the helper column:
C1: =MIN(FIND(theCodes,B1&CONCAT(theCodes)))<LEN(B1)
and fill down as far as needed
This will return TRUE or FALSE depending on whether any of the codes are present in the cell.
Then, a simple COUNTIF will count all the TRUE's
D1: =COUNTIF($C:$C,TRUE)
NOTE: To enter/confirm an array formula, hold down ctrl + shift while hitting enter. If you do this correctly, Excel will place braces {...} around the formula seen in the formula bar.
I've done some searching and I can't find anything that seems to match up with what I'm trying to do precisely. I'm familiar with Excel, formatting, and formulas, but by no means a master.
I have three sheets - Summary which is where the count value should be done, Tracker which is where the range to count is, and OrigTrackerData which has data used in the conditional formatting formula.
What I'm trying to do is count the number of cells within a certain table column that have a certain conditional formatting rule applied (rule below).
Here is the conditional formatting rule:
=A1<>VLOOKUP($A1,OrigTrackerData!$A:$L,COLUMN(),FALSE)
The intent of the rule, which is applied over the entirety of Table710 which exists in Tracker, is to determine which cells have changed relative to OrigTrackerData, regardless of row order of the two sheets - column A of both sheets have an "index" of sorts.
I've gotten as far as something like =COUNTIF(Table710[Notes], ???) but I can't determine how to convert the conditional formatting formula to a COUNTIF condition.
I am open to accomplishing this via VBA as well - I originally attempted to do so using color functions found here: http://www.cpearson.com/excel/colors.aspx but those functions apparently don't work on colors applied by conditional formatting.
Edit: BYate's comment neatly obviated the need for this. I am curious if something like this is possible though, but now just out of idle curiosity.
I'm trying to make a formula that will color code three cells that are directly above/below each other. The color coding depends on the sum of three other cells that are directly above/below each other, and directly across from the cells to be colored.
This part is easy. The rule is:
Forumula: =SUM(H5:H7)>30
And it applies to:
$E$5:$E$7
However, the issue is that when I copy the cells that are being colored (E's) to three more cells below them for the next batch, the relative formula does not work as expected. It applies the formula on H6:H8 (+1) instead of H8:H10 (+3).
Is there a way to get the relativeformula to work as expected? I hope this was clear enough. I know it's hard to visual a spreadsheet, but ultimately I need the relative forumla to add +3 instead of +1 when it is copied.
Problem:
If I correctly understand, what you are trying to achieve is to have the range E5:E7 formatted strictly based upon H5:H7, then the next three-cell range - E8:E10 - based upon H8:H10 and so on. You can do this by implementing the below solution:
Solution:
Step 1: Setup Columns as Below
Step 2: Implement Conditional Formatting as Below
Explanation:
I have recreated your issue and I see your problem; it was not that obvious until I played around with changing values of different cells in Column H.
Apparently, this has to do with how Excel interprets your instructions (formula) supplied under conditional formatting. To understand this let's first focus on the behavior of cells E5, E6 and E7 as a function of values in Column H.
With the formula =SUM(H5:H7)>30 did you notice that:
E5 format depends upon =SUM(H5:H7),
E6 format depends upon =SUM(H6:H8), and
E7 format depends upon =SUM(H7:H9) and
when you copy the range E5:E7 three cells down into E8:E10, the expected behavior is:
E8 format depends upon =SUM(H8:H10),
E9 format depends upon =SUM(H9:H11), and
E10 format depends upon =SUM(H10:H12)
And this is exactly how the range E8:E10 will behave once the above solution is applied.
A partial answer to your question has to do with your relative formula - =SUM(H5:H7) - under conditional formatting. Using this formula causes $E$5 to use =SUM(H5:H7) to determine its formatting, $E$6 to use =SUM(H6:H8) to determine its formatting, and so on. This ultimately leads to issues with the conditional formatting even before you begin copying the cells down.
EDIT: (piggy-backing off #Bharat Anand's answer)
#Bharat Anand's answer appears to be the best way to accomplish this question.
#Thisisstackoverflow requested clarification (under the accepted answer) and I'm hoping my screenshot below will help.
I set my worksheet up in what I believe is the exact same manner as #Bharat Anand, and it seems that the column letters may have been off. Setting mine up like this made it work correctly.
EDIT: (clarification for future visitors)
I really liked #Bharat Anand's solution, so I wanted to explain how it works (using the images/formulas in the solution as reference):
The calculation in Column I is setup to return a number that will only appear three times, in succession, in Column I; in this way it kind of behaves like a unique identifier, allowing other formulas to reference these values for calculation purposes.
Three times is key for the original poster because they were looking for a range of three cells to be formatted based on a sum of three cells. For example, the formula in Column I can be modified to
=ROUNDDOWN((ROW()-b)/a,0)
where:
a is your desired number of cells to format/sum, and
b is equal to a - 1.
Using the formula in J5 as an example, this SUMIF formula uses I3:I7, which includes two (or b, as setup in my explanation above) rows above and two (b) rows below to decide if I5 equals any of the values found in I3:I7. It's important to include the two rows above and two rows below so that the range overlaps the same three cells to meet the requested requirements.
When I5 finds a match, the formula looks to Column H to sum those rows in H3:H7 where I3:I7 equals I5. In this example, J5, J6, and J7 will each equal 32.
Using the simple conditional formatting formula that was setup, we know that cells in Column E should be highlighted when the corresponding row in Column H is greater than 30. According to the original question, this should be done in ranges that are three (a) rows tall. We already handled for that, so all that was left was to make sure the conditional formatting spanned the data area in Column E.
I'm hoping I don't confuse and/offend anyone with this explanation, but it's how I understand it. I like the proposed solution and explaining it to myself again helps me solidify how it works.
I have a question with regards to conditional formatting which I simply can't seem to solve.
The aim is to format the background color for the left-most cells that are blank up until a cell contains a value - and after this there should be no more formatting in this row. You can see an image of the result I'm hoping for beneath:
So far I've managed to create the conditional formatting of the blank rows, but sadly haven't managed to create the "single-cell" formatting (in yellow) conditional of the sum of all the first cells being = 0.
I've created a formula which actually succeeds in calculating the sum of the previous cells, but this formula includes INDIRECT() which it seems that conditional formatting doesn't allow. At least I'm getting an error starting with the follow (translating the error from Danish to English might not be intuitive):
You cannot use reference operators such as.....
The formula I'm trying is the following:
=AND(SUM(A2:INDIRECT(IF(COLUMN(A2)>=27;CHAR((64-26)+COLUMN(A2))&CHAR((64-26)+COLUMN(A2))&ROW(A2);CHAR((64)+COLUMN(A2))&ROW(A2))))>0;$K2>0)
Where $K2 is the sum of the row.
Is there a way to SUM a range of cells by doing something similar to this:
=SUM(B2:CHAR((64)+COLUMN())&ROW();"")) to dynamically SUM the range from B2 to the current cell? The problem in this case is whether the part CHAR((64)+COLUMN())&ROW();"") can be converted into a legible cell such as B4 to make it work inside the =SUM() formula?
Sadly the =ADDRESS() formula cannot be used (as far as I know) as this will trigger the same error in conditional formatting as well.
For now I would like this to work with the regular Excel conditional formatting, but if anyone have a simple VBA this would also have interest - however, I would by far prefer the regular solution.
The question:
Is there a way to create a formula that doesn't trigger this error - maybe by refrasing the formula or doing something completely else?
It seems to me that this could be handled with a much simpler CFR formula like,
=and(not(sum($a2:a2)), $k2)
Am I missing something?
I've been trying to get to grips with SUMIF & COUNTIF functions in Excel recently, with limited success. I've realised the crux of the problem is that help pages give far too specific examples, including the official Office support.
I already know how to put together complex tests with multiple criteria already, using IF statements. What I really need is a guide to how to convert IF statements for use in such functions.
The real issue for me is what happens to cell references? I have a column of cells, each with some value for a given property. With an IF function I can go into the adjacent column, test the neighbouring cell using some criterion or set of criteria to find its value for a given property, and return an appropriate answer. I click and drag my formula down to check all the cells.
Eg. A1:A10 are the cells I'm testing. The property I'm checking is their length, whose value will be the number of characters. The appropriate answer will be whether the number of characters is above or below a threshold.
Put together; IF(LEN(A1)>50,"above","below")
Pasted into B1 and dragged down to B10 I get an array of answers.
Suppose I want to count all the cells which meet the condition, that's where I'm stumped. COUNTIF looks like I could just specify the range (A1:A10) and condition LEN(A1)>50 and get my answers. But what do I put inside LEN()? I want to go through and check for each cell in the range, how can I specify just one? Specifying none: LEN() or the range LEN(A1:A10) won't work.
For highlighting cells (conditional formatting), it's easy, just put the top left cell of the array, so LEN(A1), but that doesn't work either!
I hope that's made the problem clear. Obviously I could just have
IF(LEN(A1)>50,1,0) in B1:B10, and SUM(B1:B10) in C1 or something, thus counting all the cells which match the criteria in the if statement. But that seems like a totally retrograde step which negates the benefits of COUNTIF entirely. Namely that it saves space and reduces complexity in the sheet by doing away with intermediate steps.
And I have at least 1 sheet for which that definitely won't work owing to the volatile nature of my array sizes; I wouldn't be able to fit the additional intermediate columns if I wanted to!
SO, can any IF-statement-style check be converted to work with COUNTIF/SUMIF, if so then how, and are there any other tips you could include in case someone with a similar problem comes searching? Thanks so much for answers and help!
Use SUMPRODUCT:
=SUMPRODUCT(1*(LEN(A1:A10)>50))
COUNTIF/SUMIF do not like it when you try to modify the range to be tested. You can do a lot with the criteria, but not the range. It is what is given up to use it in a non array form.