I received a question that made me think of something I had tried to do in a spreadsheet a few months ago but never got around to discuss on this blog. Suppose that you have a large set of data that looks like:

There are a large number of things that could be done with such a set of data but one always tricky aspect is getting answers to questions that involve multiple columns. For example, if someone were to ask you, how many different locations of the store sold at least 1 Early Grey Russian black tea box on each day? I cannot simply add up the number of sales since some stores sell multiple boxes. What could I do? I’ll add 2 columns and include the “countif” function which will give me my answer:)

First, I will create a column with a “UniqueID” with the concactenate:

Then, I will use the “countif” function to see if the ID is unique:

As you can see, all numbers that are “1” are non-Unique. I can then manipulate that column in different ways

As always, you can download the spreadsheet here:)

I often get these types of questions where someone is trying to do a nested if function but having trouble doing so. Here is one such example:

“I am trying to write a and/if statement to read if b2=”manager” and d2=”b” and h2

The other day I got an interesting question from a reader. He was trying to do an IRR (internal rate of return) but had one specification. An IRR function assumes that all cash flows are at the same period of the year. He wanted something more precise that would account for the fact that some cash flows might be at the start, beginning or middle of the year. I suggested that he try to do an IRR manually and decided to give it a try myself.

First, take a look at a traditional IRR function result:

Then, I decided to get the same result but with a function instead. How?

An IRR function is the rate of return for break-even. So I created a formula manually that would calculate the “NAV”. When that NAV would become $0, I would have the correct IRR. Look at this screen:

Then, I used the goal seek function to set the nav to $0.

As you can see, I get the same result:

Then, I did the same exercise but changed the years to reflect the period. So Q1 of the 3rd year would become 2.25, etc. See the result here:

I’ve heard from several of you that use Excel to manage large sets of data nad I know hata few of you must then get different metrics from that data depending on specific conditions. I’ve already covered Sumif quite a bit so today I thought I’d get into “averageif”. Let’s start with a large set of data:

This is an example of the top rankings in the WTA tennis tour. One typical thing that you could end up wanting to do is find information such as:

-What is the average # of tournaments that the top Russians have played compared with the top Americans. Here is How I would do it:

I’m certain that many of you can now imagine how this could be used.

I received a question along with the following table:

The question is as follows:

“IF the Transaction is a ‘delete’, AND the Rate Category is selected, THEN match the delete rate from the corresponding Rate Category List into the Rate cell, IF the Transaction is an ‘add’, AND the Rate Category is selected, THEN match the add rate from the corresponding Rate Category List into the Rate cell.”

Again, it’s about trying to go step by step. the first case here is:

IF the Transaction is a ‘delete’, AND the Rate Category is selected, THEN match the delete rate from the corresponding Rate Category List into the Rate cell

So here, I’d need an “if and” condition that will check the value of the first column, look if cell 2 is empty and if both conditions are met, do a vlookup to find the correct rate. Simple? Here is what I came up with:

=IF(AND(A13=”Deletion”,B13<>“”),VLOOKUP(B13,RSUI_Deletes,2,FALSE),””)

The second part is:

IF the Transaction is an ‘add’, AND the Rate Category is selected, THEN match the add rate from the corresponding Rate Category List into the Rate cell.

Here I will use a similar function of course:

=IF(AND(A14=”Addition”,B14<>“”),VLOOKUP(B14,RSUI_Adds,2,FALSE),””)

I can then combine them together as follows:

=IF(AND(A13=”Deletion”,B13<>“”),VLOOKUP(B13,RSUI_Deletes,2,FALSE),IF(AND(A13=”Addition”,B13<>“”),VLOOKUP(B13,RSUI_Adds,2,FALSE),””))

One last change I will make is to add an “Unknown” if the first column is filled but not the second by changing the formula to:

=IF(AND(A13=”Deletion”,B13<>“”),VLOOKUP(B13,RSUI_Deletes,2,FALSE),IF(AND(A13=”Addition”,B13<>“”),VLOOKUP(B13,RSUI_Adds,2,FALSE),”Unknown”))

The end result is:

As you can see what looked very complex ended up being rather simple:)