Excel: Create lookup based on list of criteria - excel

I have a little bit of an Excel problem and would be happy about any suggestions.
Long version: I have a dataset with raw data representing journal entries. The structure of this dataset can be seen here:
Now, what I want to achieve is to assign each row/each journal entry to a cost category (marketing, personnel, IT, depreciation, …) based on the values in the account number, type, and cost center rows, and, in a second step, break down the categories once more, eg. for labour costs, distinguish between direct and indirect labour costs.
The way my company does this right now is using an Excel sheet with several macros where the criteria are hardcoded in the VBA code to loop through the whole list, check if a row matches the criteria for a certain cost category, and if it does, copy the row to a new sheet (having one new sheet for each category), then using a second macro to break down the categories, assigning values to the “description”-column which is empty initially based on another set of criteria. Then, pivot tables are used on each of the new sub-datasets to calculate sums for each sub-category. These sums are finally used as input data for a management report (as seen in the image above) which is the ultimate goal of this whole ordeal.
Now, not only does this seem overly complicated to me and running the macros and manually adjusting the input ranges for the pivot tables takes forever, but also the criteria for allocating the costs can change quite often, and opening the VBA editor and changing the code is not really user-friendly.The initial idea was to maybe include some helper columns (one for each cost category) and somehow create an indicator variable being one of the entry falls in the respective category, and zero otherwise, and then use these columns for further calculations (e.g. for Sumifs and such).
The problem is that a) combinations of account number and type are not unique, so that one account number can go along with various types, and one type can go along with various account numbers, so the criteria can be something like C6 = 544300 OR 544700 AND D6<>110246, etc. And b) criteria can change, meaning sometimes a new account number or type is added that also has to be assigned to an already existing category such as labor costs, which would make it necessary to include that criterion in all the formulas for that particular cost category. So, is it possible to somehow create a criteria table for each category that serves as input for some sort of IF/SUMIF or lookup function?
Short version: I have a data set (can range from 5000 to up to 100000 rows, 8 columns) where I want to perform a lookup, but based on various criteria. And, in addition to that, it would be nice if the criteria could somehow be drawn from a separate list so that they can be modified fairly easily without having to change the formula itself. Is there a way to do so? Or do you think using the advanced filter might be the most suitable option?

Related

Excel pivot table with ranking

I'm in the processing of creating a report for the company I work at that has a rather complicated survey export file that needs to have the data extracted in meaningful ways.
The table headers are as follow https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Et9Pg6k9CJA3HTO0aHcnSnOWVU05bmHYUsPS0wB2Nr8/edit?usp=sharing
It has respondents listing there top 3 most important options and the rest are left blank.
If anyone can help me figure out a way to potentially summarize this in a pivot table that would be great.
You're data is in a crosstab. Pivot's don't like that kind of layout. You need to unpivot your data.
If you've got the PowerQuery add-in installed (or have Excel 2016 or Excel/Office 365 subscription) then you can use PowerQuery to do this. Google "PowerQuery" and "Unpivot" and you'll turn up a whole heap of videos.
Otherwise you can use VBA such as my Unpivot routine I've previously blogged about at http://dailydoseofexcel.com/archives/2013/11/21/unpivot-shootout/
As always it depends what questions you want to ask in your analysis. Here are two suggestions.
What are the commonest first/second/third choices?
This assumes that the ranking is important, i.e. the first choice is ranked significantly higher than the second choice, so you want to analyse them separately.
You could add three extra columns to your data using this formula to convert the first choice to a single variable with 11 categories
=IFERROR(MATCH(COLUMNS($A:A),$A3:$K3,0),"")
in L3 and likewise with the second and third choices in M3 and N3.
in the event that a respondent (row) has less than three choices, it will give a blank for the second and/or third choice.
What are the commonest choices regardless of ranking?
This assumes that the ranking isn't so important - you just want to know which columns have been picked overall.
=INDEX($L$3:$N$10,INT((ROWS($1:1)-1)/3)+1,MOD(INT(ROWS($1:1)-1),3)+1)
In N3. This would have to pulled down for 3N rows, where N is the number of rows in the original dataset.
Then it would be a simple case of setting up pivot tables or charts for the four new variables.

compare two tables then sort them in excel

I have two tables with the same data but in different rows, I want to sort them in front of each other. each duplicate row in front of its duplicate.
attached photo
In a new worksheet, copy the code data from one table and append to that a copy of the code data from the other. Apply Remove Duplicates to that column and sort ascending.
Now use that sheet to look up (VLOOKUP Description, Uom and Unit Price from one of your tables into three separate columns (say 2,3,4) and lookup up same fields from the other of your tables into a further three columns (say 5,6,7).
Wrap both formulae in IFERROR(....,"") to reduce noise.
I take it any numbering will be applied independently in a new sheet (ie No. is not required to be copied to there).
Incidentally you have a lot of unconventional hyphens (eg L-80 is never normally written other than as L80), m for OCTG as a unit of measure leads to many problems and with competent staff a structured catalogue could be advisable for a high value of stock and long-term storage.

SSAS Calculated member that knows if the user is using the report filter

I am trying to write a calculated member which acts differently depending on whether the user is filtering by that member or has it dragged down as rows or columns on their pivot table (using Excel).
The rules are:
1. If the user is using the date dimensin as a Report Filter in Excel, then the calculated member should get the maximum date out of all dates that they are filtered by.
2. If they have the date dimension as rows on the pivot table, then I need to apply ClosingPeriod and some other logic.
Please try this. The idea came from here.
Basically the dynamic named set represents what's in the report filters. And the EXISTING keyword trims the list of days down to the filter context of the current cell letting you detect say if one month is on rows. Compare counts and you can detect what the user did.
CREATE HIDDEN DYNAMIC SET CURRENTCUBE.SelectedDays as
[Date].[Date].[Date].Members;
CREATE MEMBER CURRENTCUBE.[Measures].[My Calc] as
CASE
WHEN SelectedDays.Count > {existing [Date].[Date].[Date].Members}.Count
THEN Tail({existing [Date].[Date].[Date].Members},1).Item(0).Item(0).Name
WHEN SelectedDays.Count < [Date].[Date].[Date].Members.Count
THEN Tail(SelectedDays,1).Item(0).Item(0).Name
END
Performance is going to not be good. And I suspect users will be confused with the results of your calc. If you want to describe the business scenario more I can maybe recommend a better approach.

Excel: Averaging the values from a set of rows, but only include them if they have a specific value in a column

I'm looking for help dynamically averaging the column values of every item in an Excel table that has a given value in one of its columns. Specifically:
I have an Excel sheet where each row represents an entity in a video game I am working on, and each column is a numerical value for different attributes on these entities. Movement Speed, Health, Attack Damage, etc. Each of these rows also has a column where I tag the row with the name of the class that this entity is a part of: "tank", "support", etc. This table has roughly a hundred items in it, and is likely to grow to two or three times that size.
It looks something like this:
What I would really like to do is have, on a separate tab, a table where each row represents one of the classes, and shows the average value of all of the entities that have that class in their "group" column. And I want it to automatically include new entities of that class as they are added to the first table.
It would look something like this, where these values are automatically generated from the data in the first table (I have no problem manually entering the class names, I just need the numerical data to be driven):
I imagine that the solution will be a complex, nested pile of VLOOKUPs and MATCHes and other Excel functions, but I am not really sure how to accomplish this. I didn't even know the proper terminology to search for existing answers to this question, so I hope that it isn't too redundant. Thanks very much for any advice you have!
Version: I am using Excel 2013.
I think all you need is a pivot table. (its been around since the 90s?) - and very useful!
there are lots of ways of refreshing etc depending on where the data comes from
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/pivottable-reports-101-HA001034632.aspx

How do I create report-like data tables in Excel?

In the past I have created websites that extract data from a database and format it using tables.
Now, I am trying to do the same thing but with Excel, and I'm lost. I am used to using SQL commands to extract data from given fields and then sort/manipulate it.
Currently, I am able to print a report that provides me with an Excel spreadsheet full of raw data, but I would like to make my life easier and organize it into a report.
The column that I would like to reference contains duplicates, but the data in the adjacent columns is different.
To give an example, assume I had a spreadsheet of sales transactions. One column would be the Customer ID, and the adjacent columns would contain the quantity, the cost per unit, total cost, order ID, etc.
What I would want to do in this case would be to select all the transactions with the same Customer ID and add them together based on their Order ID. Then, I would want to print the result to a second sheet.
I realize that I can use built-in functions to accomplish this, but I would also like to format this report evenually using VBA. Also, since I will have a variable number of rows that differ from one report to the next, I haven't encountered a fucnction that will allow you to add rows.
I'm assuming this must be done with VBA.
Well you can do it manually, but it would take ages. So VBA would be good, particularly as you would be able to generate future reports quickly.
My interpretation of what your saying is that each row in your report will be the total for one customer ID. If it's something else, I imagine the below will still be mostly relevant.
I think it would be a bit much to give you the full answer, particularly as you haven't provided full detail but to take a stab at what you'd do:
Create your empty report page, whether it be a new worksheet or a new workbook
Loop through the table (probably using While next is not empty)
a. Identifying if a row is for a customer ID you haven't covered yet
i. If so then add a new entry in your report
ii. Else add it to the existing customer ID record (loop through until you find it)
Format your report so it looks pretty, e.g:
a. Fill the background in white
b. Throw in some filled bars
c. Put in good titles and totals etc.
For part 1, it might be better building an array first and then dumping the contents into the report. It depends how process intensive it will be - if very intense, an array should shave off time.

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