Quick Find of most recent date/time without having to sort.

[Virginal]

I have a dataset with a large number of rows. I sort this by Shop, Sales Person, DateTime Last Sale.

I now want to find the most recent "date/time last sale" for each shop, the obvious thing seems to do a pre sort but that seems like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

I want to use the quickest way to find those dates and maybe doing the sort is not so resource hungry as I think.

All opinions welcome

 

[T. Valko]

I have a dataset with a large number of rows. I sort this by Shop, Sales Person, DateTime Last Sale.

I now want to find the most recent "date/time last sale" for each shop, the obvious thing seems to do a pre sort but that seems like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

I want to use the quickest way to find those dates and maybe doing the sort is not so resource hungry as I think.

All opinions welcome

Since dates/times are really just numbers formatted to look like dates/times you can probably use a MAX(IF array formula**.

=MAX(IF(A2:A10="Shop1",B2:B10))

Where B2:B10 are the dates/times.

** array formulas need to be entered using the key
combination of CTRL,SHIFT,ENTER (not just ENTER).
Hold down both the CTRL key and the SHIFT key
then hit ENTER.