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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Summing a Range of Separate Pairs of Delimited Numbers

Here are two formula options to sum a range of cells, when each cell holds a delimiter (in this example, a hyphen character), and you want to separately sum the cells’ numbers to the left and right sides of the delimiter.
In the picture, the array formula in cell B14 that sums the San Francisco Giants’

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Using a Formula to Transpose a Vertical Range Horizontally

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Using a Formula to Transpose a Vertical Range Horizontally
As the picture shows by example, you can horizontally transpose a vertical range at any cell outside the vertical range with the formula
=INDEX($A$2:$A$25,COLUMNS($A$2:A25))
Note the absolute and relative references.
TTFE0019

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Hiding Your Named Ranges

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Hiding Your Named Ranges
In the below picture, your workbook’s named ranges can be shown by clicking the down arrow next to the Name box.
TTFE0017a
The following macro hides the named ranges, and as the next picture shows, you can work with hidden named ranges the same as you would when they are visible.

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Using SUMPRODUCT on Multiple Columns

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Using SUMPRODUCT on Multiple Columns
Most examples of the SUMPRODUCT function show a single list of numbers being evaluated for a particular criteria. The following 6 pictures show a simple modification involving SUMPRODUCT, to demonstrate some versatility with that function.
The first picture shows a range of monthly sales of a few warehouse items that are listed as data validated criteria for cell A2.

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Summing and Averaging Dynamic Lists, Including or Excluding Blank Cells

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Summing and Averaging Dynamic Lists, Including or Excluding Blank Cells
The below picture shows a side-by-side comparison of summing and averaging the last 5 cells in a dynamic list, depending on if blank cells should or should not be included in the formula results.

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Summing Historic Numbers by Date, Excluding Weekends or Weekdays

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Summing Historic Numbers by Date, Excluding Weekends or Weekdays
When you have a list of numbers for previous dates, such as with payroll or sales activity, here is an example of how you can sum the past 14 days for weekdays only and for weekends only.

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Finding Matches Among Horizontal and Vertical Ranges

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Finding Matches Among Horizontal and Vertical Ranges
Here is how you can verify if a matching value is found in both a horizontal and vertical range. In Picture #1 a match is not found, but in Picture #2 a match is found.
The formula in cell A1 is
=IF(ISNUMBER(LOOKUP(9.99999999999999E+307,MATCH(A3:E3,F6:F17,0)))+0=1,”Found”,”Not found”)
Conditional formatting is applied to cell A1 for two conditions.

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Calculating Negative Time Differences in Hundredths of a Second

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Calculating Negative Time Differences in Hundredths of a Second
When you want to calculate differences in time when the measurements are in hundredths of a second, special consideration must be given for cases when the result is negative. The next pictures show examples of calculations when the Actual time is less than expected;

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Analyzing Named Ranges with the INDIRECT Function.

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Analyzing Named Ranges with the INDIRECT Function
The INDIRECT function can refer to a named range for quick data analysis, especially if you don’t need or want to use a pivot table. In this example, columns B:F hold several years of daily sales activity for a department store.

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Using Label Headers as Intersecting Lookup Criteria

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Using Label Headers as Intersecting Lookup Criteria
I previously posted this example of using the spacebar character as the mathematical operator in a formula to sum numbers in the intersecting range of multiple rows and columns. Also is this other example of using a formula to lookup an intersecting value.

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Averaging Positive and Negative Numbers With Multiple Criteria

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Averaging Positive and Negative Numbers With Multiple Criteria

When crunching numbers, there are many ways to slice and dice the Average onion, depending on what criteria you want to include, exclude, combine, or isolate.

The picture shows a list of positive and negative numbers,

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Rounding Numbers By Fractions or Decimals

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Rounding Numbers By Fractions or Decimals

When rounding numbers to a particular decimal factor, you can express that rounding factor in your formula as either a fraction or as its decimal equivalent. In the pictures, the fraction one-eighth can be stated in a formula as 1/8 or by its decimal equivalent of .125.

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Evaluating Numbers as Being Whole or Decimal

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Evaluating Numbers as Being Whole or Decimal

There are times when you want to identify a number as being a whole number (such as 47) or a decimalized number (such as 23.5).

The picture shows three ways to apply this idea.

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Using VLOOKUP With MIN, MAX, and AVERAGE

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Using VLOOKUP With MIN, MAX, and AVERAGE

You can nest a function as the lookup_value argument with VLOOKUP, to return an item relating to the lookup_value function. In the pictured example, MIN, MAX, and AVERAGE are nested to return the name of the salesperson associated with those functions.

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Doing Date Math on Text (non real) Dates

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Doing Date Math on Text (non real) Dates

In yesterday’s tutorial, I showed how to place a date and time on separate lines in the same cell.

That example involved a formula with the TEXT function,

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Putting a Date on One Line and Time on Another Line in the Same Cell

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Putting a Date on One Line and Time on Another Line in the Same Cell

Here’s a tip to place the date and time in the same cell, in separate lines.

The first step is to enter the formula
=TEXT(NOW(),”MMMM D,

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Finding the Position of the First Integer in an Alphanumeric String

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Finding the Position of the First Integer in an Alphanumeric String

When you are faced with alphanumeric strings, such as those esoteric-looking serial numbers that represent a store’s stock items, here is how you can deal with parsing them based on the position of their first integer.

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Finding the Number Closest to Zero

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Finding the Number Closest to Zero

Here are two formulas, one to tell you the number closest to zero in a list, and the other to tell you the address of the cell holding that number. When you know a list does not contain a zero (if it did,

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Returning a Value From Every Nth Cell

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Returning a Value From Every Nth Cell

Here’s a formula to help you list (that is, return) the values from every (in this case) 6 cells. This is a useful method when your data is structured such that you know the incremental factor of rows that are in between cells that carry the data you want to separately list.

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Adding and Subtracting Time in Hours Minutes and Seconds

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Adding and Subtracting Time in Hours Minutes and Seconds

Formula examples for hours, minutes, and seconds being added or subtracted from time.

Hours
Example to add 3 hours: =$B$1+TIME(3,0,0)
Example to subtract 3 hours: =$B$1-TIME(3,0,0)

Minutes
Example to add 16 minutes: =$B$1+TIME(0,16,0)
Example to subtract 16 minutes: =$B$1-TIME(0,16,0)

Seconds
Example to add 48 seconds: =$B$1+TIME(0,0,48)
Example to subtract 48 seconds: =$B$1-TIME(0,0,48)

Combination of Hours,

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Validating an Entry as a Real Date

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Validating an Entry as a Real Date

One way to verify that a bona fide date is being entered into a cell is to use Data Validation.

In the pictured example, dates are being entered into a list in column E.

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Conditionally Format Five Highest or Lowest Numbers in a List

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Conditionally Format Five Highest or Lowest Numbers in a List

Here’s how you can utilize Conditional Formatting to identify the highest or lowest numbers in a list. Despite the literal title of this lesson, you can highlight the highest or lowest 3,

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Transposing a Dynamic List From Horizontal to Vertical

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Transposing a Dynamic List From Horizontal to Vertical

I previously posted this example, of transposing a range by copying it, and selecting the Transpose method in the Paste Special dialog box.

There are plenty of projects that require an immediate transposition using a formula to avoid the burden of manual Copy and Paste Special for Transpose every time a header cell changes.

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Counting Words in a Sentence or String

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Counting Words in a Sentence or String

Here is a formula to count the words in a sentence or string of text.
=IF(LEN(A2)=0,0,LEN(A2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A2, ” “, “”))+1)

The SUBSTITUTE function handles the possibility of the cell containing no text or value.

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Extracting Text to Left of the Second Space (or Specified Character) in a String

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Extracting Text to Left of the Second Space (or Specified Character) in a String

Previously, I posted this example of extracting text to the left of the first space, or of some specified character.

When you need the first two words in a string,

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Evaluating a Number Within an Absolute Value Range of Another Number

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Evaluating a Number Within an Absolute Value Range of Another Number

You will sometimes be faced with a long list of numbers, maybe thousands of rows deep, and you’ll just want to know if the sum total is within a plus or minus range of a benchmark number.

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Finding the Absolute Row Number of an Item in a List

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Finding the Absolute Row Number of an Item in a List

In yesterday’s tutorial, I posted this example to return the relative row number of an item in a list.

Today’s example offers a formula to return the actual row number of an item in a given range,

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Finding the Relative Position of an Item in a List or Table

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Finding the Relative Position of an Item in a List or Table

You’ll sometimes need to know the relative position, such as the relative row in a list or table of an item. This is usually different than the item’s actual row on the Excel spreadsheet grid.

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Finding the Lowest Positive Number

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Finding the Lowest Positive Number

Here’s how to return the lowest positive number in a list that has positive and negative numbers.

In the pictured example, the number 1 is returned in cell L3 because it happens to be the lowest number above par (in column C) in the list of this year’s Masters Golf Tournament final scores.

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Finding the Number Farthest From Zero

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Finding the Number Farthest From Zero

Sometimes you’ll need to find a number in a list that is farthest from zero, where some numbers might be positive and others might be negative.

This task has 2 considerations:
1. You will need more than a simple MIN or MAX function.

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Modifying Your List of Recently Viewed Files

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Modifying Your List of Recently Viewed Files

You may know that the keyboard shortcut Alt+F reveals your list of most recently used files.

You can press Alt+T+O to show the dialog box to modify your list of viewable files.

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Using a Formula to Get Your Active Worksheet’s Name, and Active Workbook’s Path and Name

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Using a Formula to Get Your Active Worksheet’s Name, and Active Workbook’s Path and Name

Here are two formulas, one to return the active worksheet’s name, and the other to return the active workbook’s full path and name. In each case, please be sure to save the workbook at least once.

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Seeing Values and Formulas on the Same Spreadsheet at the Same Time

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Seeing Values and Formulas on the Same Spreadsheet at the Same Time

Did you ever want to watch your spreadsheet in two separate windows in real time, where in one window you can see its values, and in the other window you can see its formulas?

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Doing a Lookup for Last Number or Last Text in a List

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Doing a Lookup for Last Number or Last Text in a List

Here is how you can look up items in one column, based on the last cell in a different column of that list which contains a number or text.

The formula in cell E2 is =INDEX(A3:C17,MATCH(9.99999999999999E+307,A3:A17,1),3).

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Reverse Lookup of nth Highest and nth Lowest Numbers

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Reverse Lookup of nth Highest and nth Lowest Numbers

Here are several examples rolled into one screen shot that show how to:
• Return the minimum and maximum numbers in a list.
• Return the 2nd, 3rd, and nth highest and lowest numbers in a list.

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Selecting All Cells With Comments or Data Validation

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Selecting All Cells With Comments or Data Validation

I previously posted this example of selecting only constants or formulas.

You can do the same with cells that contain comments or data validation.

Select the range of interest.

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Entering a Function’s Arguments Tooltip in a Cell

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Entering a Function’s Arguments Tooltip in a Cell

You can press Ctrl+Shift+A in mid-entry of your worksheet functions to show their tooltips’ argument text directly in your cell, and type your function arguments right over those text tips.

Step 1
Start by entering the function name,

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Looking Up the Address of an Item in a List

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Looking Up the Address of an Item in a List

Here is a formula that returns the address of the cell in a list that contains a particular item. In the picture, cell D2 contains a Widget Stock Number, and cell E2 contains this array formula to return the item’s address:
=ADDRESS(MIN(IF(A3:A15=D2,ROW(3:15))),1)

Recall,

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Dynamic Summing From the Active Cell

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Dynamic Summing From the Active Cell

Here’s a cool formula that you can plug into any cell, which will dynamically sum a list of numbers from the top of the list to the cell of the row the formula is in.

For example,

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Listing Column Letters Across and Down

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Listing Column Letters Across and Down

Here are formulas to display the column letter in any individual cell, or to list column letters horizontally across a row, or vertically down a column.

As shown in this first picture, you can display any cell’s column letter with the formula
=SUBSTITUTE(ADDRESS(1,COLUMN(),4),”1″,””)

You can use that same formula,

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Finding the Minimum and Maximum Numbers in a Filtered List

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Finding the Minimum and Maximum Numbers in a Filtered List

You can use the SUBTOTAL function to look up the minimum or maximum number in a filtered list.

In the picture, the formula in cell B1 that returns Sue Flay’s minimum sales number is
=SUBTOTAL(5,B5:B100)

The formula in cell B2 that returns Sue Flay’s maximum sales number is
=SUBTOTAL(4,B5:B100)

The first argument for SUBTOTAL is Function_Num,

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Summing Only Positive or Negative Numbers

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Summing Only Positive or Negative Numbers

In a list that contains positive and negative numbers, here are formulas that can sum those numbers in different ways, depending on the nature of your project.

Based on the picture:

• Formula of only positive numbers summed: =SUMIF(B3:B15,”0″)

• Formula of only negative numbers summed: =SUMIF(B3:B15,”

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Converting an Elapsed Time to a Decimal Number

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Converting an Elapsed Time to a Decimal Number

Some employers pay their employees based on work time that is measured in decimals as portions of an hour. For example, if an employee works a 7-hour and 45-minute day, the employer pays that person for 7.75 hours of work time.

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Finding the First and Last Days of the Week and Month

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Finding the First and Last Days of the Week and Month

Here are formulas to return various dates of first and last days of a given month.

First day’s date of that month: =DATE(YEAR(B1),MONTH(B1),1)

Last day’s date of that month: =DATE(YEAR(B1),MONTH(B1)+1,0)

First Monday date of that month:
=DATE(YEAR(B1),MONTH(B1),8)-WEEKDAY(DATE(YEAR(B1),MONTH(B1),6))

Last Friday date of that month:
=DATE(YEAR(B1),MONTH(B1)+1,1)-WEEKDAY(DATE(YEAR(B1),MONTH(B1)+1,1)-6)

First day of the month,

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Calculating Dates for Last Day of Current, Previous, and Future Months

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Calculating Dates for Last Day of Current, Previous, and Future Months

As pictured below, here are formulas that return the date for the last day of…
• Current month: =DATE(YEAR(NOW()),MONTH(NOW())+1,0)
• Last month: =DATE(YEAR(NOW()),MONTH(NOW()), 0)
• Next month: =DATE(YEAR(NOW()),MONTH(NOW())+2,0)

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Summing a Range Diagonally

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Summing a Range Diagonally

Every now and then you come across an unusual request to do this or that in Excel. Such an example is summing a range of numbers diagonally, as shown in the picture for B11:F15.

The array formula that accomplishes this in cell B17 is
=SUM(B11:F15*(ROW(B11:F15)=COLUMN(B11:F15)+9))

Recall,

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Rounding Times by the Minute

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Rounding Times by the Minute

Here are 3 formulas that round a time to its nearest minute, or up to the next minute, or down to the previous minute. This example uses the ten best times of the 2012 Boston Marathon. You’ll notice the number 1440 in the first formula,

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Rounding Elapsed Time by 5 Minutes

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Rounding Elapsed Time by 5 Minutes

Here are 3 formulas that round an elapsed time by the 5-minute mark, in terms of nearest 5-minute mark, up to the next 5-minute mark, and down to the last (lower) 5-minute mark.

In the picture,

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Rounding Elapsed Time by the Quarter-Hour

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Rounding Elapsed Time by the Quarter-Hour

Here are 3 formulas that round an elapsed time by the quarter-hour, in terms of nearest quarter-hour, up to the next quarter-hour, and down to the last (lower) quarter-hour.

In the picture, notice the differences for each employee’s elapsed time in decimalized quarter-hour segments,

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Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Rounding Elapsed Time by the Half-Hour

Tom’s Tutorials For Excel: Rounding Elapsed Time by the Half-Hour

Here are 3 formulas that round an elapsed time by the half-hour, in terms of nearest half-hour, up to the next half-hour, and down to the last (lower) half-hour.

In the picture, notice the differences for each employee’s elapsed time in decimalized half-hour segments,

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