excel newbie hitting a wall

goat82

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Joined
Nov 26, 2009
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4
Hey guys - I am just learning that sometimes excel can't handle something and you may need some code - but am curious if there is a solution to this. If you have 4 columns of text based data and want a list of the content of the first column for rows filling certain criteria in the other three columns what function would you use?

In the real situation there are over 1000 rows of which only 5 meet the critreria for a given search and what I want is that list of 5 items on the first 5 rows of the resulting list - not spread out over 1000 rows. Using the standard "IF" format doesn't do this for me.

Any suggestions / guidance would be appreciated - sorry if this has been addressed previoulsy - I have not gone into the forum history.
 

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have you tried the AutoFilter or Advanced Filter features of Excel? Based on your brief explanation Filtering may be the solution for you.
 
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That could be it! I've never used that function but it seems simple enough - hopefully I can build that into what I need it to do.... I'll re-post if I have another drama as that help is hugely appreciated
 
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OK - I see this working as dumping a report into one tab/sheet and having other sheets pre set up to run the different filters I need to get the data I need. To make that work I need to know 2 things;

1) how do you make one sheet, or at least a column, equal ALL the lines of another column in another sheet without dragging the "=" formaula across and down 5000 rows?

2) how can I change the display of the tabs for each sheet so they are stacked rather than running along a dragger bar - I need all the tabs visible for user frendliness and I will need about 24 different filter combos.
 
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why do you want to setup 24 different sheets? can't you just use the same sheet to apply the filter?
 
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If you need a number of filters, another option may be looking at Pivot tables.

Regards
Michael M
 
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why do you want to setup 24 different sheets? can't you just use the same sheet to apply the filter?

Basically I'm building a tool to be used in several of our retail stores to analyse stock on hand. The users of this tool will be new staff in a growing business and most will have no excel experience and effective training would not be time efficient due to rotation of roles. Our inventory software is basic but has some real advantages and we're not looking at upgrading - hence needing to export reports from it into our own formatted excel pages as analytical tools. The idea of all the sheets is that from one dump there are let's say about 24 sub categories of data that would each have it's own list and ideally be quickly linked to via one mouse click - hence sheets. They all run similar but different filtration of the of the same data, breaking the 5000+ line stock report into usefully sorted lists of stock by category/pricerange/size.

If you think there's a better approach to this feel free to clue me up - I can visualise the sheets working perfectly but the 2 problems I raised would need resolution.

I will look into pivot tables - thanks for the guidance - all suggestions a massive help to me.
 
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I was thinking along the lines of 1 sheet (data source) + 1 combobox + 1 sheet (for the filter output). The user will select a report from the combobox then (using vba code) that will filter the sheet based on the report selected.
 
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