Compare and Sort a Column in Excel - excel

I am a firefighter and when we have large wildfires in California we order a lot of overhead positions to assist at the fire. These overhead position fall into 1 of 6 categories.
As I import the list of outstanding overhead requests into Excel, is there I way I can assign a value to each position? 1 through 6? I can then sort the entire list by number and hand a list of all "1's" to one person and "2's" to another person etc.
I'd like to assign a value to each position COMPARED to a master list. On the master list I will tell Excel that a "Helicopter Coordinator" = 1 for example.
Thanks for the assistance :)
Here's an example of some miscellaneous overhead positions:
O-42 OPERATIONS BRANCH DIRECTOR (OPBD)
O-44 TECHNICAL SPECIALIST - CREWS (CALIFORNIA ONLY)
O-45 INCINET STATUS/CHECK-IN RECORDER (CALIFORNIA ONLY)
O-47 OPERATIONS BRANCH DIRECTOR (OPBD)
O-48 FIRE FIGHTER TYPE 2 (FFT2)
O-50 HELICOPTER COORDINATOR (HLCO)
O-52 MEDICAL UNIT LEADER (MEDL)

Related

Excel 365 Getting a Drop down with right Parent for Child

I have a family tree with 4 generations. I have put them into named groups of Parent and Child, for a child in 1st generation becomes a Parent in 2nd generation and so forth.
I can easily, pending some rules, decide what Parent resides in 1st generation and a list of Children from Parent.
When you work with this for a while you start to recognise a system of Children in the 4th generation, and you then just select that Child and from that choise I can then select (XLOOKUP, VLOOKUP) who is the Parent of selected Child.
My problem comes when my children Peter, Joe, Beatrice, Jim, Joe suddenly gets an overlap. The 2 Joes which normally have 2 different parents now only have 1, due to LOOKUP only finding the first solution.
I can easily make a FILTER of which Parents are linked to a Child, and list them seperately but I need that FILTER inside a Data Validation (Drop Down). I have tried the INDIRECT solution and it didn't work as intended. FILTER(Parent;Child=D5)
The function I'm using right now is XLOOKUP(D1;Child;Parent;"not found";0;1) , that works brilliantly when the family tree is straight up and clear. I select the Child, it finds the Parent, which in turn find the (Grand)Parent, etc. When I do find a Joe it returns the Parent of the 1st Joe in the system, messing up the family trees.
Optimally I would have a Drop Down of the possible Parents of this Joe and then the family tree would continue.
(There's a client and level of IP involved. The specific word is 'Other' and several trees are using the word to describe a group of products. Due to IP I can't change any names or make it Joe 1, Joe 2, etc)
I have 1000s of rows of this, when I've selected a family/product-line for a row that row is done. I can't feasible allocate that Drop Down out. The filter needs to be incl in the Drop Down/Data validation menu. Each time the client returns with a new Workbook, I'd prefer I just copy-paste the logic and easily covering the 1000s of rows.
4 generations and 5 families. If for each generation there'd be a drop down of Parents for a Child, that would solve for those families with a Joe.
TRANSPOSE(FILTER(Parent;Child=D1))
Actually the solution was a support outsider, but not column, but rather row wise.
But what about the indetermined length of possible parents?
That is where the spill functionality comes in. Data validation with just the first cell, and reference finished with a #. The # makes it a spill. =C1#
But a Data validation is normally vertical, how do you turn it?
Excel does that by auto.

Creating a process to filter Specific Data via Rows and Columns in Excel

I'm trying to help a colleague with some work in Excel, he has a data-set of 40 Organisations of which each organisation has multiple Key Personal (KP). For each of these KP there has been an assessment against 3 key areas of criteria (where they are given a Y or N), these criterion being:
Geographic Area (Broken down into 26 Geographic Areas)
Industry Experience (Broken down into 18 Industries)
Areas of Expertise (Broken down into 18 Areas)
An example of the data is shown in the screenshot is linked
What I am trying to achieve is set up a 'filter form' that will allow an individual to put in their requirements (e.g. Aged Care Experience, in All of the West Region) and be provided with an output of the organisations that fit this criteria.
I have attempted to achieve this via utilizing a Pivot table, but have had no luck due to the different criteria and the fact that each organisation has multiple KP.
Any assistance would be much appreciated as to whether this can actually be achieved in Excel and how it could be done. If it can't I was thinking whether an Access Database could be used.
Update:
Please see attached the example data extract as requested by donPablo
Data Extract
From discussions with my Colleague the best outcome for him would be to get the Supplier, The KP and the other Criteria (think of it as filtering to hide all the Organisations and KPs expect the ones that meet the criteria).
if this is not achievable I can imagine that having the name of the organisation and KP as the output (that meet the criteria) would be suffice.
Think about maintenance of the ExampleData...
Adding a new Industry. Adding a new Expertise.
Splitting Industry into 3 Industry-s
Adding new Org with 2 KP
Deleting old KP3 from an org
For now with the initial concept, changes are small.
But soon in growth period there will be many changes.
How do you distribute these changes to all the users?
Thus, some sort of Split solution is needed.
A back-end DB (XLS or MSACCESS or SQLSERVER) ,
and a front-end form for--
Selection(s)
Results
Back-end as XLS could still be as ExampleData...
To be kept in central office.
And a front-end that links or references that db
but does not contain all the detail rows.
I think that the main matrix needs another column
called AreaType, value G or I or E
and that the area heading row needs to say
'ANY Geo" and have all "Y"-s in each column, etc for I and E.
In searching the matrix for Aged Care we should only look at Industry.
The ANY row would be chosen when the user does not choose an area.
I think that "Org" is a separate table
And that "KP" is another separate table.
This allows full details to be stored elsewhere
than the main matrix of areas.
Column heading of matrix would be "Org#~KP#", which would be
parsed on the tilde and separately looked up.
(it is improbable that any org or kp will have a tilde).
Yes, it is possible to search the matrix and retrieve qualified rows.
For ncol = minCol to maxCol
CountYInG = 0: CountYInI = 0: CountYInE = 0:
For each AreaType G, I, E
' then look at what was selected (gggg/iiii/eeee)
For each AreaName in (gggg/iiii/eeee)
If matrix = "Y" then add 1 to Count
next
next
if CountYInG > 0 and CountYInI > 0 and CountYInE > 0 then
This Org/KP qualifies
endif
next
added Pi Day, 20:00
First inclination is NOT to have 3 criteria tables (G/I/E), but rather ONE table.
Lets make several alternative DB designs. Then look at usage, and rank them.
Finally choose one and do it. Good luck, and Bye.
Matrix alternative
MatrixTable--AreaType & AreaName (PK), and one attribute Column for each Org/KP with value 'Y' or blank.
1st row has PK=C-ColHeadings, and each Column has Org#/KP# for that column.
OrgTable--Org# (PK), and OrgName, OrgStreet1, OrgStreet2, OrgCity/State/Zip, OrgPhone, ...
KPTable --KP# (PK), and KPName, KPOrg#, KPPhone
Normalized alternative (Admin would need to do pivot to see matrix view)
DetailTable--Org#(FK)-KP#(FK)-AreaType-AreaName(FK) DetailValue = 'Y' or ('Y' by implication of row existance)
OrgTable--Org# (PK), and OrgName, OrgStreet1, OrgStreet2, OrgCity/State/Zip, OrgPhone, ...
KPTable --KP# (PK), and KPName, KPOrg#, KPPhone
AreaTable--AreaType-AreaName(PK) (so that everyone spells it the same)
Your favorite design... list the tables, and their fields

Generating a unique identifier list with multiple tables & criteria

I'm not a coder, just someone who uses excel for basic estimating functions at work. However I've found myself in need of a complex list or index system.
Background/Intent: (Skip below if doesn't matter.) In an apartment building construction they build buildings like opened books - mirror images of 2 bed 2 bath apartments, for example. There is a standard "typical" unit and then the mirror image across the hall, the "reverse" unit. The door swings are all opposite from one to the other. My job is to figure out how to give each door a unique identifier code based on: Bldg No., Unit Type, Door No., Door Swing (left or right.) The raw data tables are provided below.
I've attempted to clean this up as much as possible, but there are two steps (I think) to this process.
Step 1:
The raw data table is on the left. My output field is on the right. I want to be able to select a drag down box, like data validation list, and select the building. Then a formula (which one?) spits out a list of every unit type per building. For example, Bldg 5 has 2 each of "A1 Typ." How do I get the formula to recognize that if there are 2 of them, to produce 2 separate lines for "A1 Typ." And so on and so forth until all 41 occurences/units have been accounted for and labeled appropriately. Some occur once, some multiple times, and some zero.
Step 1
From there, Step 2.
I want to use this output field again to automate another sequence, this time pulling from a different table, see picture. Now, depending on the unit type under the "type" column, I want it to expand each unit type showing each indivudual door number (1,2,3 etc through 12) and if it's an L (LH) or R (RH), and if there is more than one, to list out each occurence. (what formula?)
Then the decriptor text that will pop up under "DOOR LABEL" column would just be a joining of several fields to give a unique identifier. (suggestions?)
Step 2.
Easy right? Is this too much for excel, or can this be done?
Thanks so much for considering helping me out!

Excel to Access strings as numbers

Not sure if this can be done through Access or some simple code in Excel? But say I have in Excel a few rows like so:
CARD TRIGGER CATEGORY QUANTITY TARGET
Magma Drake StartOfTurn Damage 1 Opponent
Lava Moat ReciveDamage Damage 5 AttackingCards
Rockslide AfterCasting Damage 15 AllOpponentCards
Ash Imp AfterCasting Damage 5 TargetOpponentCard
Eruption AfterCasting Damage 15 TargetOpponentCard
Eruption AfterCasting Damage 15 Opponent
Lava Streams StartOfTurn Mana 2 OwnerMana
Firebomb Troll Death Damage 8 AllOpponentCards
Scorched Avata AfterCasting Damage 8 Opponent
Scorched Avata AfterCasting Damage 8 Owner
Hero of Flame AfterCasting Stats 3 AllOwnersCards
Falling Stars AfterCasting DamagePlus 8 Opponent
Falling Stars AfterCasting DamagePlusPercent 4 AllOpponentCards
I want to be able to export this to Access, but instead of strings for the TRIGGER, CATEGORY and TARGET, I want to use numbers. Thus:
StartOfTurn = 1
ReciveDamage = 2
AfterCasting = 3
Death = 4
ect... for all 3 columns. I was not sure if I could put in an alias value for strings and then export the alias value? How can I do this? Also note I would like to keep the string values in Excel as its easier for me to understand, but its easier for code if the values in Access are numbers.
One approach might be:
Create "lookup" tables (say, named Triggers, Cateogories, and Targets) in Access that list the numbers that correspond to the strings.
Import or link your existing Excel data into a "staging" table in Access.
Write a query in Access that joins the staging table to the lookup tables to "look up" the numbers based on the strings.
Use the query directly, or run a make table query or an append query based on it to transfer the results to a separate table and use that table instead.
The easiest thing would be to export the whole table into Access and then run an Update query in Access to replace the values you want replaced. So far as I know, you can't update values only on export, you would have to first replace them in Excel which you said you don't want to do.
Also, for the record, it would be very easy to keep this all in Access if you used dropdowns (aka Combo boxes) to choose your values. You could display the full string, but only store the number in the table.
Not sure i used the best approach, but i created a lookup table like Brian said, but in excel. So i had something like
B1 B2
triggers triggers_numbers
startofturn 1
endofturn 5
endofturn 5
Afterattack 4
startofturn 1
Then when i imported the data to access, i used the values in trigger_numbers instead of triggers.

Book ordering comparison between spreadsheets for existing catalogue of a Library

I have recently asked this question of google's spreadsheet page.
I a significant data comparison problem I would like to solve. It relates to purchasing books for a Library. We have a catalogue of over 11,000 books. When we order new books we need to compare our proposed purchases to the current stock. Currently we can manually compare them to our catalogue, very laboriously book by book.
We need to do 3 things to make our life easier -
1 easily clean out bad data/characters in the ISBN's - these are either spaces, - (hyphen's) or . (period mark or full stops). A simple formula to run over all ISBN fields would be great.
2 I need to compare data between 1 spreadsheet with 11,000 books in it (current library stock), a second with up to 1000 books in it (currently on order) and finally the third currently active one (about to be ordered) with 50 to 200 books listed in it.
All spreadsheets use the same column configuration as below
Library orders
Title Author Publisher ISBN (long version) US$ UKgpd HK$ Other$ P/O no. Date ordered
UNNATURAL SELECTION MARA HVISTENDAHL Public Affairs Publishing; Reprint edition (May 1, 2012) 978610391511
Finally, the out put of these comparisons should quickly and easily identify on what lines we have matches. and what type of match it is, Author only, Author and Title, or Author, title and ISBN etc for all the possible combinations. To make this easier assume spreadsheet 1 is an unalterable master table, with spreadsheet two similar. It is really only on Spreadsheet 3 we need to be clear if we are starting to reorder materials.
If it is possible to have these as different sheets in a workbook it would be ideal. The only additional feature is that any scripts that run need to be able to cope with spreadsheet 1 increasing in size as new acquisitions arrive and are included. Both spreadsheets 2 and 3 will vary (increase and decrease) as the ordering process proceeds.
Finally the absolute ideal would be for this comparison process to be instant (live) and ongoing as data is included.
If anyone would like to take this on 3 Library staff will be eternally grateful.
regards
Nick
This would be very much easier had you one sheet rather than three (simply add a column to each existing sheet to show whether in stock, on order or to be ordered – three individual letters would be sufficient, then append each of the smaller two files to the largest). Then for example you could apply Conditional Formatting to highlight duplicates one column at a time (Author, Title etc). Apart from the initial data cleansing it would mean in the future switching ‘between sheets’ would merely involve changing a one-letter flag. Filtering would allow you and your colleagues to appear to have three separate sheets and if anyone asks for a particular Title the search would be one-time, not in triplicate.
Also, http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=15011 may be of interest, also =SUBSTITUTE.And with data validation you would prevent entry of a new ISBN that already is in your list.

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