I work at a private international school which wastes a ton of paper. My goal is to reduce that by using google sheets to collect students lunch data from teachers, rather than writing it on paper weekly, then having someone input it all manually, then make separate sheets for each student manually.
I want to make this more efficient by using google sheets.
My google sheet 1 has all the students' data for a whole month with all their names and data in what I expect is a normal format. How can I use the google sheets split function to read the column with their names in, and separate data with the same name into its separate sheet?
Screenshot of preliminary data
The picture shows the student's name repeating which will happen 4 or 5 times, depending on the month. Rather than manually separating them, I imagine there is a script I can use on google sheets to automatically read each repeated name and separate it into its own sheets.
How do I do this?
The information you provide in fact has some opportunities but, I generate a data sheet for you to verify, I believe it represents the data you have.
In regard to your problem you can use a wide range of solutions one common is the:
Filter Formula
Here is some information on how to use it.
So finally here is a proposed answer sample with this formula so you can check the full configuration of the solution.
You can also just copy paste the data you have in to it, if it has the same structure and it will dynamically adapt to your information. You can also copy this spreadsheet to make it private to you on File> Make a copy.
Other formulas you can use is QUERY or VLOOKUP
If you need further assistance you can contact one of stack overflow members through Stack overflow or you can join a social group like this facebook group where we attend this kind of questions.
Related
A bit of a tricky question - I might just have to do it through VBA with a proper script, however if someone actually has a complicated answer, (let's be honest I don't think there's a super simple formula for this) I'm taker. I'd rather do as much as I can through formulas. I've attached a sample.
The data: I have data that relates to countries. In each country, you can have multiple sites. For each site, you may or not have different distributions. When those distributions meet a given criteria, I want to tally up that as a "break" & count how many by countries, sites, etc.
How it works: I'm using array formulas with sumproduct() for this. The nice thing is that you can easily add criteria, each criteria returns your 0/1 so when you multiply them it gives you the array you need to sum up to see how many breaks you have.
The problem: I am unable to format the formula so that I can account for each site being counted only once in the case where the same site has 2 different distribution types and both meet the break criteria. If both distributions meet the break criteria, I don't want to record that as 2 breaks, otherwise I may end up with more sites with breaks recorded than the number of sites. Part of the problem is how I account for the unicness of sites:
(tdata[siteid]>"")/COUNTIF(tdata[siteid],tdata[siteid] &"")
This is actually a bit of a hack, in the sense that as opposed to other formulas it doesn't return 0/1 but possibly fractions. They do add up correctly and do allow me to, say, count the number of sites correctly, but the array isn't formated as 0/1 therefore when multiplied with other 0/1 arrays it messes up the results....
I control the data, so I have some leeway. I work with tables (as can be seen) and VBA is already used. I could sort the source tables if that helps. Source data:
1 row = 1 distribution for 1 site on 1 month
The summary table per country I linked is based on those source data.
Any idea?
EDIT - Filtering for distribution is not really an option. I do already have an event-based filters for the source data, and I can already calculate rightly the indicator for filtered data by distributions. But I also need to display global data (which is currently not working). Also there are other indicators that need to be calculate which won't work if I filter the data (it's big dashboard).
EDIT2: In other words, I need to find some way to account for the fact that if the same criteria (break or not) is found in 2 sites with the same siteid but 2 different distributions, I want to count that as 1 break only. While keeping in mind that if one distribution has a break (and the other not), I still want to record it as 1 site with break in that country.
EDIT3: I've decided to make a new table, that summarizes the data for each site individually (each of which may have more than once distribution). Then I can calculate global stuff from that.
My take home message from this: I think that when you have many level of data (e.g. countries, sites, with some kind of a sub-level with distributions) in Excel formulas, it's difficult NOT to summarize the data in intermediate tables for the level of analysis at which you want to focus. E.g. in my case, I am interested in country-level analysis, which is 2 "levels" above the distribution level. This means that there will be "duplication" of data from a site-level perspective. You may be able to navigate around this, but I think by far the simpler solution is to suck it up and make an intermediate table. I does shorten significantly your formulas as well.
I don't mark this as a solution because it's not what I was looking for. Still open to better suggestions allowing to work only with formulas....
File: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/4ofctha6qhfgtqw/AAD0aPJXr__tononRTpKc1oka?dl=0
Maybe the following can help.
First, you filter the entries which don't meet the criteria regarding the distribution.
In a second step, you sort the table from A to Z based on the column siteid.
Then you add an extra column after the last on with the formula =C3<>C4, where column C contains the siteid entries. In that way all duplicates are denoted by a FALSE value in the helper column.
After that you filter the FALSE values in this column.
You then get unique site ids.
In case I got your question wrong, I would be glad about an update in order to try to help you.
Okay. I was looking at my physio's spreadsheets for his small, private business today. He uses Excel to keep track of his clients appointments, fees, attendences, medical reports etc. At the moment he has a single sheet where he adds every clients appointment to the list as he goes - there's 3 years of details, one row for every appointment! It's huge and pretty hard to navigate and make sense of when he's extracting information such as fees paid/unpaid, total visits, etc.
I'm a novice to sub-intermediate at Excel, but getting better. What I'm wondering is it possible to set up a "front page" where he can enter a day's details in a single spreadsheet, press an export cell,and then have Excel pass the relevant data to individual sheets for each client. The data on that front page would look for the clients name as a string to find the relevant sheet and drop the information in.
I'm not asking how to do it as such, but rather wondering if this is possible at all!
Thanks
=COUNTIF(Sheet1!RangeToLookThrough, ValueYoureLookingFor)
Put this where you want.
If you want a daily dashboard, you could replicate this to do something like :
=SUMPRODUCT(--(Sheet1!B2:B4000<>""),--(MONTH(Sheet1!B2:B4000)=9))
Feel free to alter this to capture yesterday or whatever date your looking for. I just used an old report to mess with and give you an example.
I have a large table of market values with rows labeled with each asset name and each column representing each month between 2000 and 2014.
The table I have is currently blank and I want to use an index / match function to search for the data corresponding to each date / asset combo in data that was submitted to me. My problem is that this submitted data is slightly inconsistent in how it names assets at different points at time. One year may have an asset called Goldman Sachs Strategic and another year may label the same asset as GS Strategic Income.
I would like to allow for the user of the spreadsheet to type names that are actually equivalent to each other. On a sheet called equivalent names I would like have cell A1 be Goldman Sachs Strategic and B1 to be GS Strategic Income. I was hoping there was a way to make A1:B1 an array that could then be used as a lookup value within my index / match function.
I realize this probably is not the way to approach this problem but I have a very limited dictionary of solutions because I have limited experience coding and using excel. I was hoping someone could point me in the direction of a solution that would actually work because I am assuming inconsistent data is a problem many people have dealt with before. Thanks a lot for any help that you can offer!
I created some random data to test with
I then created the following table on the second worksheet.
The last 5 columns (2010,2011,2012,2013,2014) represent the year to year names. Using these names (which may or may not be blank), we simply use a series of concatenated SUMIF() functions.
Because you didn't provide specific data, I understand that this answer might not fully fit your question, so if there is anything that is incorrect, let me know. Otherwise, I hope this helps.
I am in the situation where I have a questionnaire that is basically just a plain excel spreadsheet with two columns:
one column with the questions and
a second column next to it where users can fill in their answers.
Each respondent has been sent a copy of the file and they will email back their files individually over a long time period. I can't wait until i have all files back; instead i would like to collect (and use) the data in Access as the files come in.
Two questions:
What is the best set up in terms of the manual steps required when a new datafile comes in. Can one just save the file in a specific folder and somehow have the column (column B) with responses "automatically" added to the main database? If not fully automatically, what could be done with just a few manual steps involved?
I realize that the shape of the questionnaire is not ideal (variables are in rows, not in columns). What's the best way to deal with that?
Thanks in advance for any pointers!
PS: I'be open to (simple) alternatives, if Access is not the best choice for this. Analysis of the data will be done in Excel again in the end.
Update, to clarify the questions below:
1) In the short - medium term, we are expecting 50-100 replies. In the long term, it will be more as, people will be asked to send updates when their situation changes - these will have to be added as new entries with a new date attached to them. i.e. it will be a continuous process with a few answers coming in every few weeks.
2) There are 80 questions on the questionnaire.
3) The Excel files come back as email attachments.
4) I was contemplating using Acess, as I thought it will a) makeit a bit cleaner and less error prone, especially as project managers might change in the future, b) allow for better handling of the data, as it will have to be mashed up and reshaped in different ways for the anlysis (e.g. it has to be un-pivoted, which i don't even know if excel can do), and c) i thought it it would give us more flexibility in the future when it comes to using different tools for analysis. i.e. each tool can just query the database. I am open for other suggestions, including Excel-only solutions, if that makes it easier, though.
5) I envision the base table to have all the 80 variables in different columns, and the answers as rows (i.e. each new colum that comes with each excel file will need to be transposed and added as a new row). There will be other data tables with the same primary key as the row identifier in this table.
6) I havn't worked on the analysis part yet, but i know that it will require a lot of reshaping and merging of data sets.
Answer 1 - Questions
You do not provide enough information to allow any one to give you pointers. Some initial questions:
How many questionaires are you expecting: 10, 100, 1000?
How many questions are there per questionaire?
How are the questionaires reaching you? You say "email back". Does this mean as an attachment or as a table in the body of the email.
You say the data is arriving as Excel files and you intend to do the analysis in Excel. Why are you storing the answers in Access? I am not saying you are wrong to store the results in Access; I just want to be convinced you have a reason.
Have you designed the planned table structure for Access?
Have you designed the structure of the Excel workbook(s) on which you will perform the analysis?
Answer 2
Firstly, I should say that I agree with Mat. I am not an expert on questionnaires but my understanding is that there are companies that will host online questionnaires and provide the results in a convenient form.
Most of the rest of this answer assumes it is too late to consider an online questionnaire or you have, for whatever reason, rejected that approach.
An Access project is, to a degree, self-documenting. You can look at its list of tables and see that Table 1 has columns A, B and C. If created properly you can see the relationships between tables. With an Excel workbook you just have a number of worksheets which can contain anything. There is no automatic documentation.
However, with both Excel and Access the author can create complete documentation that explains each table, worksheet, report and macro. If this project is going to last indefinitely and have a succession of project managers, such documentation will be essential. I can tell you from bitter experience that trying to understand a complex Access project or Excel workbook that you have inherited without proper documentation is at best difficult and at worst impossible.
Don’t even start this unless you plan to create and maintain proper documentation. I do not mean: “We will knock up something when we have finished.” Once it is finished, people will be moving onto their next projects and will have little time for boring stuff like documentation. After the event documentation also loses all the decisions and the reasons for those decisions. The next team is left wondering why their predecessors did it that way. The reason will not matter in many cases but I have seen a product destroyed by a new team removing “unnecessary complexity” they did not understand. I always kept a notebook in which I recorded what I was doing and why during the day. I encouraged my staff to do the same. I insisted something for the project log every week. The level of detail depends on the project. The question I asked myself was: “If I had just inherited this project, what happened during the last week that I would need to know?” This was in addition to an up-to-date specification for each component.
Sorry, I will get off my hobby-horse.
“In the short - medium term, we are expecting 50-100 replies. In the long term, it will be more as, people will be asked to send updates when their situation changes - these will have to be added as new entries with a new date attached to them.”
If you are going to keep a history of answers then Access will probably be a better repository than Excel. However, who is going to maintain the Access project and the central Excel workbooks? Access does not operate in the same way as Excel. Access VBA is not quite the same as Excel VBA. This will not matter if you are employing professionals experienced in both Access and Excel. But if you are employing amateurs who are picking up the necessary skills on the job then using both Access and Excel will increase what they have to learn and the likelihood that they will get confused.
If there are only 100 people/organisations submitting responses, you could merge responses and maintain one workbook per respondent to create something like:
Answers -->
Question 1May2014 20Jun2014 7Nov2014
Aaaaaa aa bb cc
Bbbbbb dd ee ff
I am not necessarily recommending an Excel approach but it will have benefits in some circumstances. Personally, unless I was using professional programmers, I would start with an Excel only solution until I knew why I needed Access.
“I envision the base table to have all the 80 variables in different columns, and the answers as rows (i.e. each new colum that comes with each excel file will need to be transposed and added as a new row).” I interpret this to mean a row will contain:
Respondent identifier
Date
Answer to Q1
Answer to Q2
: :
Answer to Q80.
My Access is very rusty. Is there a way of accessing attribute “Answer to Q(n)” or are you going to need 80 statements to move answers in and out? I hope there is no possibility of new questions. I found updating the database when a row changed a pain. I always favoured small rows such as:
Respondent identifier
Date
Question number
Answer
There are disadvantages to having lots of small rows but I always found the advantages outweighed them.
Hope this helps.
I'm a newbie to app development. I'm using Xcode 4.3.2. I'm attempting to develop an app using a tab bar with a table view. In the table view I need to list about 100 cities and info about those 100 cities when the user selects one. Basically, I already have that data about the cities in a Excel spreadsheet.
I can't really find good examples of what I want to achieve. I've heard the terms parsing XML, SQLite, Core Data, database, etc, and I'm not sure if that is what I need to do.
I'd thankfully accept any suggestions.
If the data in the table are changing or edited, then by using a database, you will avoid rolling a new patch with those minor changes (you just change the values in the db)
If the data is the same and won't change for a long time and you plan to patch the application, then you just need a source for that data (the spreadsheet)
For parsing the data, you can use anything, when taking about showing 100 cities, it depends how big the total data you will be querying, how fast it needs to be and you just need to benchmark it.
If you are querying about 500k records and you need to do some 'figuring out' and it takes too long to load. Then, transforming your data into xml then parsing it may give you better performance.
You have to at least design your way into what you want to achieve. Check the performance and tweak it to find the decent spot.
Right now I look at it as tackling an unknown problem. Spend some time and build something. This will help you see the potential problems better.
While databases are good, for a few hundred elements you can tolerate inefficiency. If your existing data are in an Excel spreadsheet, the easiest way to get them into your app is to export the Excel spreadsheet to Comma-Separated-Values (CSV), then make your app read CSV files. (If your Excel spreadsheet has multiple worksheets, you'll need to convert each separately.)
How do you parse CSV? See iPhone : How to convert CSV format into NSData or NSString?
You'll end up with arrays of arrays of NSString. You'll probably need to define a new class for your city data, and convert each row in the imported data to one city element.
If you need to know more, posting a few rows from your spreadsheet may help.