2 possible solutions, 0 clue help requested :)

[ellmason]

Hi Guys and Gals,

first post wondering if you can help! I am trying to use a lookup to lookup a name of a student in a list of students and return some information from a table about the students. I can of course complete this task with a =lookup(etc) function. what i would ideally like to do however is return the result (from the lookup vector) as a comment in a cell (so that a big result i.e. lots of text does not wreck the sheet.
e.g

A1 B1
John Smith Yes

So i want to lookup John Smith in the table see that there is an entry (i.e. "yes") and instead of returning the info in C1 just add it as a comment to cell B1.
Hope that makes sense

The other option as i see it would be if i could use the idea of dependant cells i.e. in a cell to have =another cell, but to retain the comments of the precendant cell on the dependant cell.
e.g. if A1= blah blah *hello* where *hello* is a comment... and i say D1=A1 can i make it return the *hello* as well as the blah blah.
or as a worse but possible solution if i had
A1= blah blah as a hyperlink to another document, could my D1=A1 cell display blah blah as a hyperlink?



thanks guys,
sorry to ramble...
Ell

 

[ellmason]

Any thoughts anyone....

 

[scottylad2]

not really sure what you're trying to acheive, heres a stab at it but I suspect it's not what you want. Rather than having Yes in B2 and looking that up, you could have it elswhere and "join" your lookup value with the result something like i've done

Excel Workbook
	A	B	C	D
1			Taken	Exams
2	John Smith	yes Maths	yes	Maths
3			no	English
4			no	History
5			no	French
Sheet1

 

[ellmason]

Thanks for the reply mate, that would be a great solution if the detail (in your example "maths") was a small or one word detail, however i am looking at a much longer detail something in the order of a paragraph of text. To give you a flavour of what i am trying to achieve, i a student has a particular learning need then it wil display yes in column B2, the detail would then be a desrciption of the specific need, if i directly import the text (from another worksheet) it would totally disrupt the layout of the rest of the sheet, thats why i thought the comment or hyperlink idea would allow a better solution.

Thanks very much for having a think for me
Ell

 

[BenMiller]

Not sure if I understand your question exactly, but would this help?

If A1 had John Smith and B1 had Yes, then C1 would return a hyperlink to A1.

Is that right?

 

[ellmason]

Hi mate, sort of but more like if a1 = john smith and b1 = yes, then C1 would return a hyperlink to the john smith entry in row B of another worksheet.
Ell

 

[BenMiller]

Is that other worksheet the place where B1 would say Yes?

 

[ellmason]

yes, that is correct, sorry for the trouble!
Ell

 

[BenMiller]

So again. Sheet1 and Sheet2. Sheet one has John Doe in A1. You want to look for John Doe in Sheet2, column A; and if, in the cell right next to it, (Column B), it says YES, you'd like cell B1 on Sheet1 to return a hyperlink to A1 on Sheet2. Correct?

Question: If it doesn't say yes, can it have anything else in it? Or will it be empty otherwise?

Another question: Will there be any duplicate John Doe entries on Sheet2?

 

[ellmason]

Yes that's right, if you could make it blank if there wasn't a yes that would be great!