Excel: Transpose data from rows to column headings - excel

Question

My problem, as the title states, has to do with transposing data from rows to columns
The original data came into a csv format where in the second column 'Dates and Rank' semicolons and spaces acted as delimiters.
Country Dates and Rank
Switzerland [2014-03-07] 7;[2014-10-17] 7;
USA [2011-07-01] 7;[2012-02-17] 7;[2012-09-30] 7;[2013-01-31] 7;
France [2011-07-01] 4;[2012-02-17] 4;[2012-09-30] 4;
China [2015-01-16] 7;[2015-03-06] 7;[2015-10-16] 7;[2015-10-23] 7;
So, by using the Text to Columns function from excel I separated the data within 'Dates and Rank' column into different cells. And now the result looks like this:
Country Dates and Rank C D E F G H I
Switzerland [2014-03-07] 7 [2014-10-17] 7
USA [2011-07-01] 7 [2012-02-17] 7 [2012-09-30] 7 [2013-01-31] 7
France [2011-07-01] 4 [2012-02-17] 4 [2012-09-30] 4
China [2015-01-16] 7 [2015-03-06] 7 [2015-10-16] 7 [2015-10-23] 7
*I have also deleted the square brackets from the dates and I assigned them as YMD cells.
But what I need to do now is to use the dates as headings while I use the rank (1-7) as their allocated data within the cells. For example:
Country 2011-07-01 2012-02-17 2014-03-07 2014-10-17
Switzerland 6 7
USA 5 7
Any suggestions please?
Thank you.

Answer 1

I'll assume your data starts in cell A1 (i.e. A1 contains "Country").
First, create a new worksheet where your newly ordered data will come. You first need to fill in the column header row. You can do this by
manually copy-pasting all the date columns from your original data to a single column in the new worksheet, so that all dates are in one column
Remove duplicates (in the ribbon: Data > Data Tools > Remove Duplicates)
Sort the list if you want (Data > Sort & Filter > Sort)
Select the resulting data, copy, and transpose-paste in cell B1 (Home > Paste > Paste Special, and check the box "transpose"). Now you can also remove the data you just copied.
Second, copy-paste column A of the source worksheet into column A of the destination worksheet.
Finally, for each country and each date you want to look up the data right next to the date. You can do this by using the following formula in B2:
= IFERROR( INDEX( Sheet1!2:2, 1, MATCH( B$1, Sheet1!2:2, 0 ) + 1 ), "" )
Finally, copy this formula down and across.
This should do the trick just fine, but it is not a very flexible solution and you need to follow the steps exactly as explained. For example, if the countries are in a different order than they are in your original data sheet, it won't work.