Is it possible to count the number of individual entries in a cell?
For example 2+2+4-1 = 4 entries
Using the count formula counts the entries as 1
I want to calculate the number of adjustments made in a particular period.
Each +/- in an individual cell represents 1 adjustment.
Assuming you're referring to a text cell, the trick is to count the symobols you'd like to find. Before we dig into that, if you want to enter this data as text, you can use the ` symbol (Usually to the left of the 1 key on your keyboard) before entering your text to make sure it gets processed as text.
If you want to verify that it is text, you can use the TYPE function and look for a return result of 2 (check the link for other possible return types)
There are no direct functions to count characters in Excel, so the trick is to find the length of the original text and subtract it from the length of a new text where you have removed all of the special characters. You mentioned you were trying to count the entries (i.e. the numbers), but you said your goal was to ultimately count the number of '+/-' operations. Since counting numbers can be tricky with excel formulas (since we'll get hung up on 2 and 3 digit numbers), I am going to approach this problem from the perspective of counting the operations you are looking for. So here is a basic example:
length("2+1") = 3
- length("21") = 2 (we replaced the + with "" [blank])
= 1
So we know there is 1 '+' since we replaced it. The appropriate functions used to accomplish this are LEN and SUBSTITUTE
Since you can only find one symbol at a time using the SUBSTITUTE function, we must take the output of the first formula, and give it to the second formula, and so on and so forth. Ultimately, we can put together as many functions as we need to achieve the desired result.
So we start with + for your example (And assuming your data is in A1)
=LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"+",""))
which gives us a result of 2. But we also need to find the - symbol. So we wrap another SUBSTITUTE:
=LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"+",""),"-",""))
You have said you wanted to count the number of +/- in the cell, and this does accomplish that, but if you want to expand it to more mathematical operators, you simply add more SUBSTITUTE functions (here is a complete function where I've added * and /)
=LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"+",""), "-",""),"*",""),"/",""))
Well, this formula would replace all your numbers with "" and then Count the +/- and adds one, should do it, but is ugly:
=LEN(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(A1;"0";"");"1";"");"2";"");"3";"");"4";"");"5";"");"6";"");"7";"");"8";"");"9";""))+1
Could probably be done with RegEx, but I don't know how to do that in formulas
This makes 31+12+3-4 to ++-, Counts the LEN (3) and adds 1
I've found some tools that can do what I want, but despite trying various options I can't work out how to put them in my existing formula!
I'm trying to generate an invoice reference number, which would look like 'ABC000012' - with the first row being ABC000001 and increasing in number as each row is added. I can currently generate 'ABC1' and so on, but can't work out how to add the preceding 0s.
I'm currently using CONCATENATE as follows:
=IF(ISBLANK(B2),,CONCATENATE("ABC",(ROW(1:1))))
What do I need to add to this, and where, in order to get the references I'm looking for?
I'm also happy to be advised that I should change the whole formula if there's something different that will work better
Thanks
Use TEXT() to set the preceding 0:
=IF(ISBLANK(B2),"",CONCATENATE("ABC",TEXT(ROW(1:1),"000000")))
=IF(ISBLANK(B2),"","ABC"&RIGHT("000000"&ROW(1:1),6))
This is based off Scott Craner's answer. The difference is that is will limit the number of digits in your invoice to 6 characters. if you want it to always be 8 characters long change the 6 to an 8 and increase the number of 0 between the " ". Alternatively you could also do:
=IF(ISBLANK(B2),"","ABC"&RIGHT(rept(0,6)&ROW(1:1),6))
In the above formula to change the number of digits n the invoice number, you would need to change both 6's
Caveat:
If there is a blank cell in the middle of your list, that number will be skipped for each blank cell. To avoid this, you will need a different counting method than row(1:1).
I have an excel file with >12500 rows in one column.
It contains such random strings with 20 digits:
2,3,4,6,7,8,12,13,14,24,30,42,45,46,48,50,56,58,**59**,61
1,2,6,8,11,12,13,16,17,21,24,27,28,33,34,42,44,48,58,61
3,7,10,13,14,15,18,21,23,24,25,29,30,34,37,48,51,56,57,60
8,11,13,16,17,19,21,27,29,35,36,39,42,44,46,50,53,54,57,60
2,4,7,9,21,26,28,30,32,34,35,37,38,39,43,44,50,60,61,62
10,13,15,18,21,22,23,24,25,26,40,42,48,49,51,52,56,**59**,61,62
1,2,4,7,14,15,18,20,24,29,30,32,35,41,42,50,52,55,58,62
1,4,8,9,10,12,17,24,25,33,37,41,43,44,46,49,52,**59**,61,62
1,2,4,6,9,12,15,17,21,24,30,31,32,36,41,44,47,48,51,58
2,7,10,12,15,16,20,24,25,27,30,33,39,44,45,52,54,55,58,60
5,7,10,11,20,22,24,31,32,33,36,38,39,41,43,47,50,52,56,58
3,6,8,9,14,15,19,21,25,28,34,37,39,45,47,54,55,56,57,**59**
1,2,3,4,5,8,14,15,18,20,23,31,33,37,42,45,46,51,52,55
I need to know whats the biggest gap between rows where a number hasn't repeated. For example - I search for any number (e.g 59) and I need to know what's the largest gap between two rows where number 59 hasn't repeated.
In this example it's 4 row gap between 59's.
Hope that I make myself clear.
Seems like a fun problem which admits a simple but not quite obvious answer. First -- make sure that the data is in 20 columns (use the text to columns feature under the data tab). Using your example, I came up with a spreadsheet that looks like:
V1 holds the target number. The formulas are in columns U.
In U1 I entered:
=IF(ISNA(MATCH($V$1,A1:T1,0)),1,0)
This formula uses MATCH to test if the value in V1 lies in the range to the left of it. If it doesn't the match function returns #N/A. The function ISNA checks for this error value. IF it is present, the overall formula returns 1 (since there are now 1 consecutive row without the target number) otherwise it returns 0.
The formula in U2 is similar with a little twist:
=IF(ISNA(MATCH($V$1,A2:T2,0)),1+U1,0)
The same basic logic -- but rather than returning 1 if the target number isn't present it adds 1 to the number above. The formula is then copied down the rest of the range. It has the effect of keeping a running total of consecutive rows without the target value. This running total is reset to 0 whenever a row with the target value is encountered.
The final ingredient requires no comment. In U14 I just have
=MAX(U1:U13)
which is the number you are looking for (assuming that the maximum number of consecutive rows without the target number is what you are looking for, even if this occurs either at the top or bottom of the data. If you want the largest gap that is literally between two rows where the number occurs, the logic would need to be made more complex).
I vaguely remember that it is possible to parse the data in a cell and keep only part of the data after setting up certain conditions. But I can't remember what exact commands to use. Any help/suggestion?
For example, A1 contains the following info
0/1:47,45:92:99:1319,0,1320
Is there a way to pick up, say, 0/1 or 1319,0,1320 and remove the rest unchosen data?
I know I can do text-to-column and set the delimiter, followed by manually removing the "un-needed" data, but my EXCEL spreadsheet contains 100 columns X 500000 rows with each cell looking similar to the data above, so I am afraid EXCEL may crash before finishing the work. (have been trying with LEFT, LEN, RIGHT, MID, but none seems to work the way I had hoped)
Any suggestion will be greatly appreciated.
I think what you are looking for is combination of find and mid, but you'll have to work out exactly how you want to split your string:
A1 = 0/1:47,45:92:99:1319,0,1320 //your number
B1 = Find(“:“,A1) //location of first ":" symbol
C1 = LEN(A1) - B1 //character count to copy ( possibly requires +1 or -1 after B1.
=Left(A1,B1) //left of your symbol
=Mid(A1,B1+1,C1) //right size from your symbol (you can also replace C1 with better defined number to extract only 1 portion
//You can also nest the statements to save space, but usually at cost of processing quantity increase
This is the concept, you will probably need to do it in multiple cells to split a string as long as yours. For multiple splits you probably want to replicate this command to target the result of previous right/mid command.
That way, you will get cell result sequence like:
0/1:47,45:92:99:1319,0,1320; 47,45:92:99:1319,0,1320; 92:99:1319,0,1320; 99:1319,0,1320......
From each of those you can retrieve left side of the string up to ":" to get each portion of a string.
If you are working with a large table you probably want to look into VB scripting. To my knowledge there is no single excel command that can take 1 cell and split it into multiple ones.
Let me try to help you about this, I am not a professional so you may face some problems. First of all my solution contains 2 columns to be added to the source column as you can see below. However you can improve formulas with this principle.
Column B Formula:
=LEFT(A2,FIND(":",A2,1)-1)
Column C Formula:
=RIGHT(A2,LEN(A2)-FIND("|",SUBSTITUTE(A2,":","|",LEN(A2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A2,":","")))))
Given you statement of having 100x columns I imagine in some instances you are needing to isolate characters in the middle of your string, thus Left and Right may not always work. However, where possible use them where you can.
Assuming your string is in cell F2: 0/1:47,45:92:99:1319,0,1320
=LEFT(F2,3)
This returns 0/1 which are the first 3 characters in the string counting from the left. Likewise, Right functions similarly:
=RIGHT(F2,4)
This returns 1320, returning the 4 characters starting from the right.
You can use a combination of Mid and Find to dynamically find characters or strings based off of defined characters. Here are a few examples of ways to dynamically isloate values in your string. Keep in mind the key to these examples is the nested Find formula, where the inner most Find is the first character to start at in the string.
1) Return 2 characters after the second : character
In cell F2 I need to isolate the "92":
=MID(F2,FIND(":",F2,FIND(":",F2)+1)+1,2)
The inner most Find locates the first : in the string (4 characters in). We add the +1 to move to the 5th character (moving beyond the first : so the second Find will not see it) and move to the next Find which starts looking for : again from that character. This second Find returns 10, as the second : is the 10th character in the string. The Mid formula takes over here. The formula is saying, Starting at the 10th character return the following 2 characters. Returning two characters is dictated by the 2 at the end of the formula (the last part of the Mid formula).
2) In this case I need to find the 2 characters after the 3rd : in the string. In this case "99":
=MID(F2,FIND(":",F2,FIND(":",F2,FIND(":",F2)+1)+1)+1,2)
You can see we have simply added one more nested Find to the formula in example 1.
I have a problem that seems so simple, but I can't wrap my head around it. I have a large database, and i have two separate columns that unfortunately need to stay that way, which together are defining the time of an incident: Column A consists of an integer number "1" to "12", and Column B consists of cells with either "PM" or "AM". I need a separate column that gives me a "1" for anything that happened between 8 AM and 4 PM and a "0" for all else. Part of the problem obviously are the "12" "PM" rows. That's all I have so far:
=IF(AND(A1>=8, A1<=11),IF(B1="AM",1,0),0)
, which puts out correctly a "1", if anything happened between 8 AM and 11 AM, but not the rest. I need to combine it with:
=IF(AND(A1>=1, A1<=4),IF(B1="PM",1,0),0)
and:
=IF(AND(A1=12),IF(B1="PM",1,0),0)
but I have no idea how to combine all of these in one statement at the same time. Can anybody help?
This was a fun exercise - I'm sure there's a dozen ways to do it but here's what I found:
=IF(AND(TIME(IF(B1="PM",A1+12,A1),0,0)>=TIME(8,0,0),TIME(IF(B1="PM",A1+12,A1),0,0)<=TIME(11,0,0)),1,0)
Goes in C1
So my approach was --
If B1 is PM, then give me A1 + 12 (hours), otherwise just give me A1
IF(B1="PM",A1+12,A1)
Return a time value equal to that many hours
TIME(IF(B1="PM",A1+12,A1),0,0)
Check and see if it's greater than a value of exactly 8 hours...
TIME(IF(B1="PM",A1+12,A1),0,0)>=TIME(8,0,0)
Then wrap it in an And statement with an identical function asking if it's less than 11.
I don't like that it repeats itself, and that I have to use TIME(8,0,0) to return a value of 8 hours.. Maybe you or someone else can offer improvements or other suggestions.
Or you can try this:
=IF(AND(TIMEVALUE(A1&" "&B1)>=(8/24),TIMEVALUE(A1&" "&B1)<=(16/24)),1,0)
Simple and direct. You just need to convert what you have to its equivalent time value(between 0-1 in Excel).
And then just evaluate it using AND operand with 8/24(8AM) and 16/24(4PM). HTH.
Result: