Excel Tip: Ensuring that dropdown lists start at the top (and Merry Christmas)

Before I start this post, I must first apologise for the lack of posts over recent months. After returning from my summer holidays, my workload hasn't really eased (which isn't a bad thing), and my blogging has suffered.

I wanted to get an (albeit short) tip up before Christmas, though, and it is one of my New Year resolutions to post at least once a month in 2017.

Your Christmas tip then is a simple answer to a particularly annoying aspect of data validation dropdown boxes.

A feature of data validation drodpown lists in Excel is that if the cell already contains a value from the list, the dropdown starts with that value selected, and you need to scroll up if you want to select an earlier value.

This is normally fine except for the following (very common) scenario.

It is good practice to have the dropdown list look at a range where its entries can be edited, and to leave space at the bottom of the list to allow the list to be added to.

However, a side-effect of this is that, when your cell is empty, the dropdown will start at the bottom of the list, as it sees the empty cells at the bottom as a match for the current entry (nothing).

The simplest answer I have found to this is to have a blank cell at the top of the list as well. As this matching feature matches the first match it finds, your dropdown list will now start at the top (for an empty cell).

I often find the neatest way to do this is to have a blank row under the headers that doesn't look like part of the list:

In the example above, we could use the range A2:A14 to drive the dropdown list and cell A2 would be the first match for a blank cell, rather than A12.

That's it for now, and 2016! May you and your family have a great, safe and Merry Christmas (or whatever holiday you celebrate) and a fantastic 2017.

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Excel Tip: Using Logic in Excel

Logic (particularly Boolean Logic) plays a huge rule in computer programming and circuitry, but is also very useful in Excel.

It is fundamental to the IF statement which in itself is such an important tool in Excel, but has many other roles.

Essentially, when we talk about logic in this context, we are talking about expressions that can either be true or false, e.g.

A1=100
B5<=34
C2="Yes"

You can simply type the expression as a formula in a cell putting an "=" in front of it, so if you enter:

=A1=100

into, say, cell B1, then cell B1 will show the word TRUE if A1 is 100 and the word FALSE otherwise.

As mentioned earlier, one of the more common places to use these expressions is in an IF statement, which works as follows:

=IF(expression,value to return if expression is TRUE,value to return if expression is FALSE)

e.g.

=IF(A1=100,"Yes","No")

will return Yes if A1 is 100 and No if not.

Some logical functions
There are a few logical functions which extend the possibilities, in particular we will look at NOT, AND and OR.

NOT reverses the result of a logical expression.

If

=A1=100

returns TRUE, then

=NOT(A1=100)

returns FALSE, and vice versa.

AND allows you to list multiple expressions and returns TRUE only if ALL of the expressions would individually return TRUE. Otherwise it returns FALSE.

OR works the same but returns TRUE if ANY of the expressions are TRUE.

e.g.

=AND(A1=100,B5<=34,C2="Yes")

will only return TRUE, if all three of those statements are TRUE.

Whereas:

=OR(A1=100,B5<=34,C2="Yes")

will return TRUE if any of the three conditions are TRUE.

By using this type of logical expression, particularly within an IF statement, or  a Conditional Formatting condition, we can control how a spreadsheet both looks and calculates based upon the content of cells.





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Excel Tip: Ranking numbers in Excel

Before I start, a couple of announcements.

First of all, please accept my apologies for the time between posts. A combination of workload and a family bereavement have slowed me down somewhat!

Secondly, if any of you will be in and around London tomorrow (Wednesday) night, the ICAEW are launching their Spreadsheet Competency Framework, with some top speakers from the world of Excel. This document (as suggested by its name) is intended to provide a framework to assess spreadsheet competency, and was developed by the Institute's Excel Community Advisory Committee, of which I am a member. The event is free to attend, and further details can be found at:

http://www.icaew.com/en/technical/information-technology/it-faculty/it-faculty-events

I hope to see you there.

Right...on with the post.

There are many reasons, you might want to rank a list of numbers in Excel. One I do quite often, is produce a league table. By calculating the ranking of a number and then using lookups to populate a table in rank order, we can easily produce a league table, like the example below:

The first Rank column is the one we are trying to populate here.

In Excel 2010 onwards we will use the RANK.EQ function, which replaces the RANK function in Excel 2007 and before. Both functions work exactly the same, and both exist in Excel 2010 to 2016, at least. If you know you may have users using Excel 2007 or earlier, use the RANK function - otherwise use RANK.EQ to future-proof your spreadsheet.

The RANK.EQ (or indeed the RANK) function's syntax is as follows:

=RANK.EQ(number,ref,[order])

where:

number is the number we want to know the rank of

ref is the whole range of numbers

order is an optional argument, which determines the order that the numbers should be ranked in. If this argument is zero, or omitted, the numbers are ranked in descending order (the largest number is ranked 1), whereas if this is 1 (or any non-zero value), the numbers are ranked in ascending order.

Where two numbers in the range are the same, they are both given the highest rank (when using the RANK.EQ function - there is a similar RANK.AVG function that gives them their average rank).

In our example the numbers 30,45,97, etc. are in the range B3:B12, so we would use the RANK.EQ function in cells C3:C12. In cell C3, we would enter:

=RANK.EQ($B3,$B$3:$B$12)

Notice that we have fixed all of the references (using the dollar signs) on the B3:B12 range, to ensure that this range stays fixed when we copy it down, but just the column on the B3 reference so that the row (and the number we rank) changes as we copy down.

If we use this function as it is, we will run into a problem, though. As there are two number 24s in our range, we get the following:

Notice that both 24s are ranked 8 (the highest rank), which means there is no rank 9 - hence our error in the league table when we try to look up 9. We need each rank to be unique for our league table to work.

We will need to use another formula to address this, and we can use COUNTIFS to count how many instances have occurred so far in the list.and if this is greater than 1, to add the difference to the rank. Our formula becomes:

=RANK.EQ($B3,$B$3:$B$12)+COUNTIFS($B$3:$B3,$B3)-1

Notice that in the criteria range B3:B3, I have fixed the row on the start of the range and left it flexible on the end, so when our formula is copied down, we are always counting the instances from the top of the column to the current row. By the end of the range, our formula is:

=RANK.EQ($B12,$B$3:$B$12)+COUNTIFS($B$3:$B12,$B12)-1

On the first 24, our RANK.EQ function returns 8 as before, and our COUNTIFS counts that there is 1 24 so far, so:

8+1-1 = 8

On the second 24, our RANK.EQ function again returns 8, but our COUNTIFS now counts that there are two 24s so far, so:

8+2-1 = 9

thereby giving us the result we required:

The league table was created by entering the numbers 1 to 10 in the first column and using INDEX and MATCH to return the number at that rank from the first table.

The INDEX/MATCH function on the first row (row 3) was:

=INDEX($B$3:$B$12,MATCH($E3,$C$3:$C$12,0))

If you did not understand the COUNTIFS or INDEX/MATCH functions, please visit these earlier posts:

Excel Tip: Counting items that meet certain criteria

Excel Tip: INDEX and MATCH - an alternative to VLOOKUP (and HLOOKUP)

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Excel Tip: Adding up columns based on multiple criteria (the SUMIFS function)

Before getting into today's post I want to point you to an excellent free Webinar being offered (for a limited time) by Mynda Treacy, entitled "Creating Excel Dashboards". Mynda is a real expert on Excel Dashboards and her training materials are always excellent. You can register for the webinar here.

I realised the other day that I had never covered one of my most used functions on this blog - SUMIFS. I have covered its predecessor, SUMIF, as SUMIFS has only been available since Excel 2007.

Although SUMIF is still available in later versions of Excel for compatibility purposes, it is essentially redundant, as SUMIFS does the same thing, plus a lot more.

Let us look at an example of some sales data (see left).

Say we want to know how much Mary's sales were, or how much Sarah sold in the East Region, or even how much Ben sold in the North region in the month of January.

SUMIFS can do all of these.

The syntax for SUMIFS is as follows:

=SUMIFS(SumRange,CriteriaRange1,Criteria1,[CriteriaRange2],[Criteria2].....)

You can have as many pairs of CriteriaRange and Criteria as you need. The function works as follows:

SUM SumRange where CriteriaRange1 = Criteria1 and CriteriaRange2 = Criteria2 etc. for however many criteria you have.

For all of the examples above the SumRange will be D2:D21, as this is the range we want to sum, subject to our criteria. We will look at how we construct the rest of the formula for each of our examples above.

How much did Mary sell?
Here we only have one criteria:

CriteriaRange1 = C2:C21
Criteria1 = "Mary"

=SUMIFS(D2:D21,C2:C21,"Mary")

returns £16,853.

How much did Sarah sell in the East Region?
This time we have two criteria:

CriteriaRange1 = C2:C21
Criteria1 = "Sarah"

CriteriaRange2 = B2:B21
Criteria2 = "East"

=SUMIFS(D2:D21,C2:C21,"Sarah",B2:B21,"East")

returns £1,085.

How much did Ben sell in the North Region in the month of January?
This time we actually have four criteria:

CriteriaRange1 = C2:C21
Criteria1 = "Ben"

CriteriaRange2 = B2:B21
Criteria2 = "North"

CriteriaRange3 = A2:A21
Criteria3 = ">="&DATE(2016,1,1)

CriteriaRange4 = A2:A21
Criteria4 = "<="&DATE(2016,1,31)

There are two elements to these last two criteria that need further explanation.

The first is that if our criteria is anything other than equals, we need to include the criteria in inverted commas, for example ">23", or "<=15", to make it a string. If rather than 23, we wished to refer to a cell (say G5) we can use the ampersand (&) to join two strings together, e.g. ">"&G5.

The second is that if we wish to refer to a date directly, we need to refer its sequential number which we can calculate using the DATE function. The three arguments for the DATE function are Year, Month and Day, so to get the date sequence number for 1st January 2016, we can use DATE(2016,1,1). Note that if we entered 1/1/2016 in cell G5, we could just use ">="&G5 for Criteria3, as the cell value when you enter a date, is its date sequence value.

Our function is therefore:

=SUMIFS(D2:D21,C2:C21,"Ben",B2:B21,"North",A2:A21,">="&DATE(2016,1,1),A2:A21,"<="&DATE(2016,1,31))

which returns £4,007.

In most real situations we are likely to have all of the criteria in other cells, as we are usually doing more than one calculation.

With careful planning and smart use of dollar signs, you can structure your formula so that you only need to write it once. For example if we wish to populate the following grid from our data:

If we put the following function in cell J2, we  can copy it to all of the other cells:

=SUMIFS($D$2:$D$21,$C$2:$C$21,$I2,$B$2:$B$21,J$1)

We have used dollars to fix both the rows and columns of the references to the data table, as these should not change, no matter what cell that we are in.

For our criteria however, we want those to change between cells, so we have fixed the column of our name criteria ($I2), as we are always going to look to column I for the name, but want it to change as we change rows. Similarly, we have fixed the row of our region criteria (J$1), as we always want to look at row 1, but want it to change with the columns.

Hopefully this gives you an idea how flexible SUMIFS can be.

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ICAEW Spreadsheet Capability Framework - your opinions?

As you may be aware, I am a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) Excel Community Advisory Committee.

An important piece of work that the committee has been working on is what we are (currently) calling the Spreadsheet Capability Framework.

This document is intended to provide a reference point that spreadsheet users, employers and job applicants can use to discuss and assess competence in spreadsheet use - beyond glib phrases on a CV, such as "proficient with Excel".

Given the authorship of the framework, it is obviously primarily aimed at those in the finance field, so apologies to my non-accountant readers.

The framework has now reached the stage where we are actively seeking opinions outside the committee.

To this end my colleague, David Lyford-Smith has posted a copy of the document to the ICAEW's IT-Counts website, where your comments would be greatly appreciated.

If you would like to read the framework document and/or add your opinions to the debate, please use the following link:


http://www.ion.icaew.com/itcounts/post/Spreadsheet-Capability-Framework---exposure-draft-seeking-your-comments

Whereas comments on my blog are always welcome, and will be passed on, I would recommend commenting on the IT Counts post instead to contribute to the wider debate.

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Excel Tip: Using Index to calculate a cumulative sum (e.g. a Year to Date total)

Let me start with an apology. My current workload has meant that my posts have been a lot less frequent in recent weeks. This may continue for a while, but I will still be aiming to post at least once a month during this busy spell.

In this post I want to show you how to do something I have shown before using OFFSET, but this time using the more efficient INDEX.

Let's look at the example of a 12 month budget spreadsheet with the monthly sales figures in cells B9 to M9 (month 1 in B9, Month 2 in C9, etc.). And let's say that the current month number is entered in cell B6.

Using OFFSET we could return the current month's sales using:

=OFFSET($B9,0,$B$6-1)

and the cumulative sales using:

=SUM(OFFSET($B9,0,0,1,$B$6))

See this earlier post, if you don't understand why.

The problem with OFFSET though, is that it is what is known as a "volatile" function. This means that it always has to be recalculated when any cell in the spreadsheet changes - as it does not specify a range that it is dependent on, therefore does not know whether a change might affect its result.

INDEX however looks at a defined range, making it significantly more efficient, and in its simplest form can be used to replace both of these examples of OFFSET.

For a range the width of a single cell (as in our example), INDEX only needs two arguments to return the current month's sales:

=INDEX($B9:$M9,$B$6)

This returns the value of the cell in position B6 in the range B9:M9.

If $B$6 is 3, this will return the value in cell D9, being the third cell in the range B9:M9.

To do the cumulative calculation, we can use the same INDEX function to return the end of  a SUM range, while fixing the start:

=SUM($B9:INDEX($B9:$M9,$B$6))

Again, if B6 contains 3, then this returns the sum of the range B9:D9.

In both cases, these will only recalculate if a cell in the range B9:M9 is edited. In a complex spreadsheet with many calculations, this can make a huge difference to calculation times.





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Excel Tip: Controlling what is printed from a sheet

One of the challenges that many Excel users face, is ensuring that the printed version of a spreadsheet looks as good as it did on the screen.

There are a few simple things that you need to know to help to organise what actually gets printed and how it is spread across pages.

I will cover the first of these today, and revisit some of the others in future posts.

Today we will look at how to determine how much of the sheet is actually printed.

Left to its own devices, Excel will print all of the used area on the sheet, Specifically, it will print the whole area from cell A1 to the rightmost column and the last row that are not empty.

This may not be what is required, and it is easy to change. Simply highlight the area that you do want to print, then go to the Page Layout ribbon, click the Print Area icon, and select Set Print Area.

You can even select multiple ranges (holding down the Control key, while you select the subsequent ranges) which Excel will print on different pages.

For example, you may have a Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet alongside each other on one worksheet. Just highlight the area of the Profit and Loss (say A1:H100) and then hold down the Control key while selecting the Balance Sheet range (say J1:P80) and Set Print Area as described above.

Once a Print Area has been set in this way, you can see (and edit it) using the Name Manager on the Formulas ribbon. You will see all of the Print Areas in the workbook listed there and (scope to their particular worksheet). You can then edit these ranges like any other.

You can even make them a dynamic range using functions like OFFSET and INDEX, so that the area that gets printed is determined by values in the workbook.

A particularly useful technique is to combine this ability to set a dynamic Print Area with a formula to determine the last row of data. I explained a formula to do this in this earlier post.

Let's say we put this formula in a cell that we name LastRow.

If we want the print area to be columns A to J but the height of the print area to flex to the amount of rows occupied, we can enter the following as the Print Area (in the Names Manager):

=OFFSET($A$1,0,0,LastRow,10)

This will print a range starting at A1, with a height of LastRow, and a width of 10 (A to J is 10 columns).







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Excel Tip: An easier way to change cell colours

Before I begin, I would like to wish a Happy New Year to all of my readers and subscribers - as this is my first post of 2016.

I am starting the year in humble mode, as I have had something very simple pointed out to me that I can't believe I had never spotted, despite it being right under my nose!

In my last post of 2015, I showed you some code to swap one cell colour for another throughout a worksheet. I then received a comment from a reader that I only know as Jim, pointing out that Excel already has a very simple way of doing this!

It can in fact be done using Find and Replace.

This amazed me because I use Find and Replace all of the time and didn't know you could do this!

It is simple as this:

1. Highlight the range which you want to apply the changes to
2. Click Find and Select (the binoculars icon) on the Home Ribbon and choose Replace from the dropdown menu
3. Don't enter anything in the Find or Replace boxes, but click the Format button next to the Find box and on the Fill Tab, select the colour that you wish to change
4. Click the Format box next to the Replace box and on the Fill Tab, select the new colour that you wish to swap for the colour you selected above
5. Click Replace All

You can even start with the colour of an existing cell, using the dropdown on the format button, however be sure to remove any other formats other than Fill colour.

The thing that really shocked me is that these two big Format buttons have been right there in front of me every time that I've used Find and Replace since Excel 2003! And that's a lot of times!

In 2016, I am going to try to make sure that I constantly keep my eyes open for new ways to do things in Excel, instead of just relying on what I think I already know! And thanks again, Jim.

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