How to randomly distribute a known group of numbers into a column using Excel / VBA - vba

I'm stuck with excel/vba:
I've got a 10 row x 30 column blank array in Excel. I am trying to distribute 10 integers from a known group of 10 (say 1,1,1,1,1,1,3,5,7,9) into each column randomly so that each row of the column contains one of the group (and all of the group members are used once), and I need the second column to contain another random distribution of the same group and so on.
So I'd end up with 30 columns of 10 rows each, with each column containing a different random distribution of the same 10 integers. I want to be able to change the distribution in each row by recalculating the spreadsheet too.
Is there a quick way to do this? Short of arranging 30 different rand() sorted lists and using lookups I couldn't see a way. I'm not savvy enough with VBA to have a go. If someone can point me in the right direction, I'd be eternally grateful!

Perhaps I'm missing something obvious, though this does not seem to be so straightforward using worksheet formulas alone.
If your orginal list of values is in A1:A10, then, in B1:
=INDEX($A$1:$A$10,RANDBETWEEN(1,10))
and in B2, array formula**:
=INDEX($A$1:$A$10,INDEX(MODE.MULT(IF(COUNTIF($A$1:$A$10,$A$1:$A$10)-COUNTIF(B$1:B1,$A$1:$A$10),{1,1}*ROW($A$1:$A$10))),RANDBETWEEN(1,10-ROWS($1:1))))
Copy the above down to B10.
You can then copy the formulas in B1:B10 to the right as desired.
Regards
**Array formulas are not entered in the same way as 'standard' formulas. Instead of pressing just ENTER, you first hold down CTRL and SHIFT, and only then press ENTER. If you've done it correctly, you'll notice Excel puts curly brackets {} around the formula (though do not attempt to manually insert these yourself).

You could make a loop in which you make an array with your 10 numbers. Then loop though 30 columns, with first adding another column of 10 randomly drawn numbers to your array. See this website on how to draw random numbers. Then sort the array on the second column and post the first column.
Edit:
As I read in the comments on the other answer, the purist solution would be to:
Assign each unique option of values a random value
Sort these random values either from top to bottom or bottom to top, and select the top one.
Place it in the first row
Do the same thing again for the second row, but keep track of the sum of all the unique options, as to rule out an option once it maxed its presence.
Edit2:
Once I just clicked post I thought this a bit more through and came to the conclusion that the last digit will allmost always be 1 in this case....

Related

Excel formula not working as expected

I have a sheet that shows max values spent anywhere. So I need to find most expensive place and return it's name. Like this:
Whole sheet.
Function.
Function in text:
=IFS((A6=MAX(D2:D31)),(INDEX(C2:C31,MATCH(A6,D2:D31,0))),(A6=MAX(H2:H31)),(INDEX(G2:G31,MATCH(A6,H2:H31,0))),(A6=MAX(K2:K31)),(INDEX(K2:K31,MATCH(A6,L2:L31,0))))
Basically I need to find a word left to value, matching A6 cell.
Thanks in advance.
Ok.. Overcomplicated!
Firstly, why the three rows? it's a lot easier if you just have one long row with all the data (tell me if you actually need 3 I'll change my solution)
=LOOKUP(MAX(D2:D31);D2:D31;C2:C31)
The MAX formula will lookup the biggest value in the list, the Lookup formula will then match it to the name.
Please note: If more than one object has the maximum price, it will only return the first one. The only way I can think of to bypass that would be to build a macro.
EDIT:
Alright.. Multi Column solution is ugly and requires extra columns that you can just hide.
As you can see you'll need 2 new columns that will find the highest for each row, 2 new columns that will find the value for each of these "highest" (in this case tree and blueberries) and then your visible answer will simply be an if statement finding out which one is bigger and giving the final verdict. This can be expanded with an infinite number of columns but increases complexity.
Here are the formulas:
MAX(H2:H31)
LOOKUP(A5;H2:H31;G2:G31)
MAX(L2:L31)
LOOKUP(C5;L2:L6;K2:K6)
IF(A5>C5;B5;D5)

Excel auto-fill any row with formula and prevent it from being deleted - programming only way?

Having an Excel problem, I searched the net. Found old answer on stack overflow, but it was both incomplete and also off topic of this forum.
Since incomplete I need a much better solution and fear it will require some (VBA-) programming. Thus I hope it is on topic.
My problem is this:
I have two sheets, one for input of data, and one for presenting/printing them. Because data is never "consistent", I had to make a trick and have a cell in each data-input-row be filled with consistent data for me to do vlookup sucessfull in the printing/presenting sheet.
And yes, autofilling the whole column (row 1 to 653..) initally does the trick.
But when users 1) delete old entries, at best they mark the rows and right click to delete not only data but the entire row, meaning that the number of rows with the actual formula decreases, or at worst just delete data in the row leaving a row without formulas in the cols I need to have rows in.
2) add new entries, they either insert a new row (thus not containing the formulas), by accident delete the formula(s) in the cells (haven't figured out yet how they manage, since the cols with formulas is hidden)
So, is there any way I can ensure that whatever the user does, there will always be formulas in any row in my hidden cols?
Respectfully I am not at all into VB/VBA, so if that is a solution (programming the col to contain the formula no matter what), please bear with me and provide the rookie-understandable answer for me to implement.
Thank you very much in advance!!!
Best regards,
Steen
Additional info:
Sorry if I'm being a real newbie, but if only I could upload a picture or an example file.
My sheet have headings: A is volunteer#, B is date, C is task (gardening, car wash, babysitting, baking, ....), D is hours worked on task, E is points per hour (using Vlookup to find points per hour for each task), and finally F (my problem) containing a formula (points per hour * hours worked).
Since everyone can (and should be able to) input a record ("I am volunteer no 1, and on the 12. of february I did gardening for 3 hours". The formula in F should result in 3 hours * 15 points).
My real formula is a bit more complicated than the example, but .... A formula is a formula.
So, when people fill in new entries or delete previous week-entries etc, it is quite random if they do it in a way that wil have the function in col F work.
If they insert a new row, me having filled entire col F with the function won't work, so they should go to next blank row (perhaps way down) to insert data.
If they delete marking the rows and right click+delete, they minimize number of rows with formula in it. If they mark rows and click delete, we get blank rows without data, formulas, whatever.
So how do I ensure that each cell in col F always will contain my formula no matter what?
Saw someone pointing to something called arrayformula, but couldn't see how I could implement it to work for me (poor examples, sadly).

Union of multiple columns as one column

Could you please advise what would be the best way to create a union column for 12 separate columns (located in 12 different Excel sheets within a workbook) with or without VBA?
There are good manuals how to do it for two columns without VBA (using MATCH function) however I am not sure how to approach the case with multiple columns.
I think can be achieved with multiple consolidation ranges for a PivotTable. Would need labels for the columns and more than one column per sheet (could clone the existing ones). Should sort and remove duplicates from the list automatically (if cloned).
EDIT:
I'll assume your IDs are all numeric (otherwise, sorting would be very tricky if not impossible without VBA). You could modify the following array formula to meet your needs (select an area with enough rows to hold the full stack of IDs, enter the formula, then commit the formula with ctrl+shift+enter):
=SMALL(IFERROR(CHOOSE(COLUMN(INDIRECT("C1:C12",FALSE)),Sheet1!A1:A73,Sheet2!A1:A70,Sheet3!A1:A79,Sheet4!A1:A58,Sheet5!A1:A51,Sheet6!A1:A94,Sheet7!A1:A50,Sheet8!A1:A89,Sheet9!A1:A75,Sheet10!A1:A89,Sheet11!A1:A70,Sheet12!A1:A94),FALSE),ROW(INDIRECT("1:"&COUNT(Sheet1!A1:A73,Sheet2!A1:A70,Sheet3!A1:A79,Sheet4!A1:A58,Sheet5!A1:A51,Sheet6!A1:A94,Sheet7!A1:A50,Sheet8!A1:A89,Sheet9!A1:A75,Sheet10!A1:A89,Sheet11!A1:A70,Sheet12!A1:A94))))
I'll use a smaller version (2 columns) to explain how it works:
=SMALL(IFERROR(CHOOSE(COLUMN(A1:B1),A1:A73,C1:C70),FALSE),ROW(1:143))
First, COLUMN(A1:B1) returns a horizontal array of integers between 1 and 2. Passing this to the CHOOSE function with the two single-column ranges creates a single 73 x 2 array from both A1:A73 and C1:C70 (instead of creating a jagged array, the last three values of the second column will be filled in with #NA).
Wrap the result with IFERROR to convert the three #NA values to FALSE (otherwise, SMALL will return an error).
Next, ROW(1:143) returns a vertical array of integers between 1 and 143. Passing the 73 x 2 array and the array of integers between 1 and 143 to SMALL will return a single 143 x 1 array (vertical) of the sorted values (the three FALSE values are ignored).
Note on INDIRECT: Using INDIRECT in this way makes the formula stable even if rows/columns are deleted; however, it also makes the formula volatile, which will cause it to be recalculated every time there is a change in the workbook, which could slow things down considerably. Another option is INDEX (e.g., ROW(A1:INDEX(A:A,COUNT(...))), which can be affected by row/column deletions, but isn't volatile.
if you don't mind a bit of manual effort, this works for numeric and non numeric IDs:
Stack columns on top of each other manually using Ctrl-C + Ctrl-V
Go to Data tab --> Filter --> Advanced Filter --> tick unique records only --> choose your copy to location
This simple two step process would then give you unique union of two columns. Obviously the higher the number of columns, the more the utility of a VBA approach.

VBA- Need help to do average rows if data present in the other columns

I have a excel sheet which we may keep adding rows/ deleting them.
And I have an average value present in some cell.I would want the excel formula to identify if there is text in another column to average the columns
So now if I insert another row, I have to manually update the average formula.
Is there a way to have a formula which check if column A is not empty, it should consider the data in column G for the average
There's a lot of approaches to this. My current favourite is a CELL:INDEX(...) expression. For instance, to find the last populated cell in the first continuously populated range between B1 and B5000, I would use (probably as a named range) $B$1:INDEX($B$1:$B$500,MATCH(TRUE, $B$1:$B$500="", 0)-1).
This approach is great because it's non volatile, so it shouldn't bog your worksheet down. It might be vulnerable to $B$500 gradually shrinking if you're only ever deleting rows, though. Alternatives are referencing the whole column ($C:$C), but that's usually dog slow in modern excel, or using OFFSET which never shrinks, but is volatile.

Excel - How do I find all relevant rows by typing unique invoice# listed Col A

I have a Worksheet with 10 columns and data range from A1:J55. Col A has the invoice # and rest of the columns have other demographic data. Goal is to type the invoice number on a cell and display all the rows matching the invoice number from col A.
Besides auto filter function, the only thing comes to my mind is VBA. Please advice what is the best way to get the data. Thanks for your help in advance.
Alright, I'm pretty proud of this one. Again avoiding VBA, this one uses the volatile formula OFFSET to keep moving its VLOOKUP search down the table until it's found all matches. Just make sure you paste enough rows of the formula that if there are many matches, there's room for all of them to appear. If you put a border around your match area then it would be clear if you ever ran out of room and needed to copy down the formula some more.
Again, in the main section, it's just a single formula (using index):
=IFERROR(INDEX($A$1:$J$200,$M3,MATCH(N$2,$A$1:$J$1,0)),"")
This gets to be so simple because the hard work of the lookup is done by an initial column which looks up the next row that matches the invoice number. It has the formula:
=IFERROR(MATCH($L$2,OFFSET($A$1:$A$200,M2,0),0)+M2," ")
Here is the working example that goes with those formulas:
Let me know if you need any further description of how it works, but it mostly uses the same rules as above so that it's robust in copying and moving around.
I've uploaded the Excel file so you can play with it, but everything you need to reproduce this feature should be in this solution.
Google Docs - Click link and hit Ctrl+S to download and open in Excel.
A popular solution to this problem is a simple VLookup. Lookup the invoice the user types in on the table A1:J55, and then return an adjascent column's data.
Here's an example of it working:
The formula in the highlighted cell is:
=VLOOKUP($L3,$A:$J,MATCH(N$2,$1:$1,0),FALSE)
What's nice about this formula is you only need to type it once and then you can copy it across and it'll automatically pick out the correct column of the table (that's the match part). The rest is very simple:
The first part says lookup value $L3 (the invoice number typed in),
The second part says look it up in range $A:$J (which is where your table is located). I've shown how you can select the entire columns $A:$J so that you can add and remove data without worrying about adjustin the range in your lookups. (Excel takes care of optimizing the formula so that unused cells aren't checked)
The third part picks the column from which the resulting data will be drawn once a matching row is found.
The FALSE part is an indication that the invoice number must match exactly (no approximate matching allowed)
The $ signs ensure that fixed ranges like the location of your source table ($A:$J) and your lookup value ($L3) don't get automatically changed as you copy the formula across for multiple columns.
The formula is pretty easy to adapt if you want to move around your table and the area where you do your lookup. Here's an example:
Bonus
If you want to add a little spiff, you can add a dropdown to the Invoice # field so that the user gets auto-completion and the option to browse existing values like so: