I'm observing an apparent discrepancy between the results of the EXACT function and the conditional formatting tool.
Two cells in Column B have the same apparent text (about 30-40 words). But the "highlight cells" tool doesn't recognize them as duplicate values. Comparing the two cells with the EXACT function returns TRUE, however. This also occurs when comparing the results of the CLEAN function applied to both cells. The cells include characters like "//" and square brackets (although why that should be a problem I don't know, especially since other such cell are correctly identified as duplicates by conditional formatting tool).
Can anyone suggest why this might be happening?
An example, obfuscated with U=uppercase, x=lowercase and d=digit:
(U//FOUO) UUUU-U Increment d shall comply with current UUUxxx and UUUU Meta Data Repository (MDR) commercial, DoD, and Intelligence Community (IC) metadata standards and shall have a xxxx-xxxxxxxx controlled metadata tagging capability to tag all messages, products, and data files that are posted to the network (MRIC=Objective). [0014] [Interoperability]
It seems there is a 255 character limit to the Conditional Formatting, Highlight Cells Rules..., Duplicate Values... rule. To me plausible since consistent with the limit for characters in a formula in VBA.
A simple way to check is to apply such a rule to both the column with your data and to an inserted adjacent column (say C) populated with a formula such as:
=LEFT(B1,255)
That I expect to highlight the extracted characters. Then change the formula to =LEFT(B1,256) and I expect the formatting to disappear.
If so, you might insert another column (say D) populated with =RIGHT(B1,255) and, assuming your data is less than 510 characters per cell, you may have a workaround for detecting duplicates by applying the rule to ColumnsC:D.
Related
This question will be almost exactly like the question below, but I need a slight change to it for my application and I can't quite figure it out:
excel: how can I identify rows containing text keywords taken from a list of keywords
If a row of several text filled cells contains any keyword from a list of keywords, I would like to add that keyword to the end of the row. Each row will be the same number of cells, but some can be blank and they are not necessarily all the same data type, some could be numbers or dates etc. Even more, I would like to add every keyword that appears in the row of text to the end of the row in separate cells.
Relating to the example post that almost answers my question, I am using the more complicated formula for multiple matches, but in that example they only have one column of data they are looking for keywords in. I have several that would be formatted similar to their column A. I tried changing some of the ranges around with no luck specifically where the formula posted has: IF(COUNTIF($A1,"*"&$B$1:$B$10&"*") I changed $A1, to $A1:$D1 with no luck.
The problem showed up because I have several large spreadsheets of text based data about failure modes of different tools and I would like to categorize them in a little more of a controlled way than free form text in every cell and assigning controlled keywords that apply seems like a decent way to do this.
Example case
Expected result
The keyword list shown in Example Case is not shown in the Expected result. The range of keywords is K2:K6
Another feature that would be useful is if I could assign additional words that when found would trigger one of the key words. For example if the key word is "Gear wear" then "Gear wear" would trigger a hit but "stripped gears" would also trigger a hit. I would imagine the keyword list would be set up as a 2D Range with the first column being the actual key word and the cells to the right of each row would be additional words that trigger the key word. I suspect I am getting to the point where I would need to create a VBA macro to do this. If there is a way to accomplish this without writing code it would make it more repeatable on other user's computers.
Enter following formula in Cell F1 then drag/copy across and down as required.
=IFERROR(INDEX($K$2:$K$6,SMALL(IF(COUNTIF($A1:$D1,"*"&$K$2:$K$6&"*"),ROW($K$2:$K$6)-ROW($A$1)),COLUMNS($A1:A1))),"")
This is an array formula so commit it by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Enter
See the image for reference
This formula is derived from the link mentioned in your question.
I can't seem to nail this down. Using Excel 2010 I've got a column (B) with various 'signals' that each have a sequential number. i.e. 'IP1', IP2', IP3', 'FLOW1', 'FLOW2', 'GV1', 'GV2", and so on... I'm trying to highlight the entire row based on the type of signal (IP, FLOW, GV, etc.) ignoring the sequential value.
Using the CF highlight rule for "text that Contains" only highlights the individual cell. Using this formula to highlight the entire row: =$B2="IP" does not give desired results because all my values have a number as well. I've also tried wildcards: =$B2="IP?" and =$B2="IP*" with no luck.
Is there a way to do this without creating one rule for each sequential signal? I'd even settle for something like this: =$B2="IP1","IP2","IP3" but that doesn't seem to work either. I'm a newby at Excel and know I'm dancing all around the answer here. I don't see this particular problem in other posts...
Conditional formatting formulas you're looking for will either be COUNTIF with wildcards or ISNUMBER(SEARCH(. Personally I prefer the COUNTIF route, but here's both for your perusal:
=COUNTIF($B2,"IP*")>0
=COUNTIF($B2,"FLOW*")>0
=COUNTIF($B2,"GV*")>0
=ISNUMBER(SEARCH("IP",$B2))
=ISNUMBER(SEARCH("FLOW",$B2))
=ISNUMBER(SEARCH("GV",$B2))
I have a SpreadSheet with a column with large number represented as text, and when I apply the duplicate operation to check ( I do not use any formula, I am using excel 2010 in-built functionality of "Conditional Formatting" -->"Highlight Cells Rule" --> "Duplicate Values") even distinct values are shown as duplicate values.
For example:
If I just have following values in a column of spread sheet:
26200008004000800000000000000001
26200008004000800000000000000002
26200008004000800000000000000003
It shows as all 3 values being duplicate.
How do I fix this and check for duplicates with these large numbers in excel.
P.S: I know excel has a 15 digit limit to precision, but is there a work around or another application to find duplicates.
It seems that DupUnique property is converting the value to a number. I also note similar behavior with COUNTIF. Accordingly, I would suggest, in this situation, that you use the conditional format option to use a formula. The formula I would suggest (assuming that the range to check for duplicates is A2:A10, would be:
=SUMPRODUCT(--($A2=$A$2:$A$10))>1
I use a helper column in which I concatenate the number with a letter to make it an alphanumeric entry.
=concatenate("a",'large number cell')
or
="a"&'large number cell'
a26200008004000800000000000000001
I hope this works for you.
When pasting the numbers into Excel, put an apostrophe in front of the number to convert the number to text like this
'26200008004000800000000000000001
Thereafter you can do duplicate checks using Data -> Remove Duplicates.
If you already have that kind of data in Excel, it may appear in Exponential values and chances are that Excel chomped it up to 15 digits numeric precision. You may have to re-enter the large data with apostrophe in front of them.
Because of floating point values, I cannot add a string of cells that contain values such as:
0.08178502
0.09262585
0.13261762
0.13016377
0.12302067
0.1136332
0.12176183
0.11430552
0.09971409
0.125285
Even if I try adding the first two through a sum formula or auto sum through selecting them, excel spits out an error. I have googled this like crazy and tried to change number formats. Is there a function that can allow me to add this information ?
Screenshot:
The spreadsheet is available on my Dropbox.
Those numbers are all preceded by a NBSP (Char Code 160). So, in order to sum them, you have to remove that. Many solutions. Here's one:
=SUMPRODUCT(--SUBSTITUTE(A1:A18,CHAR(160),""))
If a formula like:
=A1+A2+A3+A4+A5+A6+A7+A8+A9+A10
produces:
#VALUE!
then your "numbers" cells contain non-visible characters.
They must be removed before the formula will work.
If the cells contain text strings and not actual values you will need to convert the text to numeric values before performing any calculations. The function "=value(cell)" will bring the numeric value.
e.g.: A1 contains "000.12345678" (or some other non-numeric presentation of numerals)
In cell B1 type: =value(a1)
Cell B1 now operates as the real number 0.12345678
Oddly enough, the fact that it said 0.xxxxx in all numbers vs. .xxxxx is what the issue was. I'm just sharing that for folks who google/search and have same issue.
All I had to do was select that whole row and do a search in replace for "0." and make it just "." and now my numbers were usable in equations. For some reason the adjustment of formating as many searches suggested wasn't working
I have some data.
I would like to find the "unique" values in the data. That is, not any data that was duplicated.
To be clear:
A
B
C
A
B
I want
C
I do not particularly care if this makes a new column of modifies the existing column. I do not, however, want to get C highlighted - my data sets are v. large and i really don't want to be scrolling along finding hyper-color yellow entries.
(I have a sneaking suspiscion this has been asked before, but given the dual connotations of "unique", it is kind of hard to search for it here)
Its a standard option of conditional formatting
Duplicate is the default, But the box allows unique too
That menu is accessed from home tab > conditional formatting > new rule
be sure to set a format for the cell then
Conditional Formatting and Filtering is much the simplest, but if you really want a formula to obtain the unique values in a different column:
=IF(COUNTIF($A$5:$A$15,A5)=1,A5,"")
This assumes the original data is in A5:A15, and this formula is entered into another column and copied down the same number of rows. You'll end up with a load of blank cells though. You'll need to copy/paste-special values, then sort in descending order (or filter) this list so that the blanks are at the bottom and can be deleted.
Actually, slightly better would be:
=IF(COUNTIF($A$5:$A$15,A5)=1,A5,"zzz")
because, after copy/paste-special values, you can sort in ascending order and you can see the values (at the bottom) that you need to delete.