I was playing around in a sheet when I stumbled upon (to me) unexpected behaviour. I isolated the behaviour an put it in a different sheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UWCNml2hvIp3zQbfI8NJovyf37C44cxacqJIChR2BUE/edit?usp=sharing
I have a bunch of codes to which I assigned times (Column A and B), this is the data source. Then I want to use this data to lookup the times based on a code. For this I use LOOKUP but it doesn't seem return the right value every time.
LOOKUP is meant for sorted data, use VLOOKUP or HLOOKUP instead.
https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3256570#Notes?hl=en see "Notes"
Related
I am utilizing a xlookup with indirect references function with certain date ranges to determine the range of rows to search in. With 3k rows of data and repeating values this helped me pair down to non-repeating values so I don't have an errant value from an earlier entry. The xlookup initially worked great when I manually inputted range of rows to search in but when indirect was introduced I am getting my error message I programmed (leading me to believe there isn't an error with my function)
When I utilize the direct references (meaning I'd have to change the date ranges directly in formula) it works great!
`=xlookup(T3,Statistics!F203:F215,Statistics!A203:215,"Not Scheduled",1,1)`
However when I use indirect to reference the specific range (so that I can adjust the date range over one cell and the reference rows recalculate) I get the error message I programmed.
`=xlookup(T3,indirect(Statistics!Q11&":"&Statistics!R11),indirect(Statistics!T11&":"&Statistics!U11),"Not Scheduled",1,1)`
Q11=F203
R11=F215
T11=A203
U11=A215
The correct answer lies in Row F205 which is within the ranges specified in the function.
Usually I figure these out or find a typo when utilizing my functions but I'll be honest and say this has me stumped. The references on the other page are identical. Just for note I also tried a Concateate function to combine the two cells before calling indirect with the same result. Any help would be greatly appreciated as this would add verification to a transportation system instead of double entry across two systems.
As far as I see it, what I think you're missing is the name of the sheet. You're referencing to the cells but not clarifying that the INDIRECT function has to look into "Statistics". Try adding it:
=xlookup(T3,indirect("Statistics!"&Statistics!Q11&":"&Statistics!R11),indirect("Statistics!"&Statistics!T11&":"&Statistics!U11),"Not Scheduled",1,1)
About that 1 after "Not Scheduled", are you sure you don't want an exact match only? Meaning to use a 0 instead of 1
I am very fresh with Excel and still learning the basics. I came upon an issue I really need help with and couldn't find suitable solution online.
I have a column I keep on constantly updating with Bulk data THE COLUMN.
I'd like to see the most common entry and the least common entry for a specific time using this formula:
=INDEX('Data Input'!F433:F610,MODE(MATCH('Data Input'!F433:F610,'Data Input'!F433:F610,0)))
But once I try it, it constantly tells me:
Did not find value '' in MATCH evaluation.
I've tried with shorter ranges and It did work, so I guess once it runs through empty cell - it breaks. How can I modify this formula to function properly and print what I need?
And side question, is is possible to implement a calendar bar and choose between dates?
You can insert a clause to exclude blanks (assuming they are not to be considered a legitimate return):
=INDEX('Data Input'!F433:F610,MODE(IF('Data Input'!F433:F610<>"",MATCH('Data Input'!F433:F610,'Data Input'!F433:F610,{0,0}))))
Note that I have used
{0,0}
for MATCH's match_type parameter so that the formula will not error should there be more than one entry within your range which shares the highest frequency. In such cases, the above formula will return that which occurs first in your list.
I'm trying to create an Activity tracker for a game. However, I'm trying to use the LOOKUP function to track activity throughout 3 different sheets. However, the LOOKUP function does not seem to be outputting the correct value. LINK: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tdq6oeEFjgxJg6FXvSH2ZmkgRlHaFiD5aycjvezfNvc/edit?usp=sharing
If you look at Activity sheet, E2:E52, you should understand that it's outputting the wrong value(At least based on what I'm reading on the google docs).
I've tried converting this over to one sheet to see if that was the problem, however, it didn't work there either, I tried being more inclusive of the exact letter and number combination and that didn't help either.
I expect it to output the Attacks column for the username based on the Activity1 sheet.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
PS: I tagged excel as it does the same exact thing on excel, however it gives slightly different values. I'm very confused.
use VLOOKUP instead:
=ARRAYFORMULA(IFERROR(VLOOKUP(D2:D,
{Activity1!C:D; Activity2!C:D; Activity3!C:D}, 2, 0)))
In column B are listed IDs of Google Sheets. In column C are listed cells, from which I want to import data.
Screenshot of the table
In column D is shown the result of using IMPORTRANGE() by simply dragging it. e.g. for D1 it looks like:
=IMPORTRANGE(B1;C1)
for D2:
=IMPORTRANGE(B2;C2)
and so on.
In column E I want to display the same result but using ARRAYFORMULA that looks like:
=ARRAYFORMULA(IMPORTRANGE(B2:B4,C2:C4))
but the function displays only the data from the first spreadsheet.
People complain about this permissions issue a lot, but it's not hard to solve. What I do is have a sheet which I name "Splash sheet" into which I paste the URLs of the documents I wish to link. To its right is a column headed "permit to connect" which contains IMPORTRANGE formulas importing a single cell from each sheet -- usually a cell containing a confirmation code, number or document name -- on a sheet also named "Splash Sheet." For example,
=IF(B3="enter URL",,CONCATENATE(IMPORTRANGE(B3,"Splash sheet!A1")," ",IMPORTRANGE(B3,"Splash sheet!B1")))
So, when you first connect a spreadsheet via its URL, you get those messages telling you you need to connect, you click the Permit Access, the confirmation code/number/document name appears in the second column, and voilá, your sheets are connected forevermore! Now all your other IMPORTRANGEs referencing that URL will work, and you can use IMPORTRANGE formulas that reference the URL-containing cells on the "splash sheet."
As for the OP's original question, I came here seeking an answer to the same problem, and after more research have realized that we are attempting the impossible here. No way to do this an ARRAYFORMULA. No way around writing formulas that reference every single cell a document's URL may go into.
Problem is you can't make arrays of arrays in spreadsheets; that would involve multiple dimensions, and the medium is inherently two-dimensional. This is what people use databases for.
ARRAYFORMULA doesn't work when importing data (I think it relates to permissions). You could use something like this, =IFERROR(IMPORTRANGE(B5:B7;C5:C7)) and pre-fill the column first, but still there would be the permissions issue. Each new imported sheet needs it's permissions granted by a user.
TLDR: If I understand your intention correctly when you say you would like to see
=ARRAYFORMULA(IMPORTRANGE(B2:B4,C2:C4)), I believe you can make that
happen using the following.
=ARRAYFORMULA(IMPORTRANGE(
INDIRECT(ADDRESS(ROW(B2:B4), COLUMN(B2:B4)),
INDIRECT(ADDRESS(ROW(C2:C4), COLUMN(C2:C4))
)
Breakdown
Use IMPORTRANGE with INDIRECT to create ranges inside ARRAYFORMULA
Call INDIRECT with the ADDRESS function
Call ADDRESS with the ROW and COLUMN functions since they take ranges via ARRAYFORMULA
using IMPORTRANGE with INDIRECT
IMPORTRANGE's two parameters are the spreadsheet url stored in B2:B4 for this example and the range (e.g. sheet!A1:B2) stored in C2:C4.
Since IMPORTRANGE doesn't take a range reference directly as you mentioned, you'll need to build it for each row with ARRAYFORMULA using the INDIRECT function.
INDIRECT can be used to compose a cell reference using A1 notation, for instance
=IMPORTRANGE(INDIRECT("B" & 2), INDIRECT("C" & 2))
will produce the same result as
=IMPORTRANGE(B2, C2)
Since this produces the same result, we now just have to find a way to make INDIRECT work with ARRAYFORMULA
Use ADDRESS to build the parameters for INDIRECT
Next you want to use ADDRESS to build the A1 reference for INDIRECT. For the current purposes, ADDRESS takes a numerical value for row and column as parameters
=INDIRECT(ADDRESS(2,2))
will produce the same result as
=INDIRECT("B" & 2)
Since these two are interchangeable, now we just need to find a way to get the numerical row and column values out of ARRAYFORMULA.
Call ADDRESS using the ROW and COLUMN functions
From there, you can get the row and column indexes from standard A1 notation using the ROW and COLUMN functions. While this may seem like we're pointlessly going in circles, the difference now is that ROW and COLUMN perform as expected with the ranges provided by ARRAYFORMULA. So given that ADDRESS will return $B$2 using using either method below
=ADDRESS(2,2)
or
=ADDRESS(ROW(B2),COLUMN(B2))
we now know that
=ARRAYFORMULA(ADDRESS(ROW(B2:B4),COLUMN(B2:B4)))
will produce the following array of addresses
{ $B$2; $B$3; $B$4 }
Final Assembly
So when we put this all together, we get
=ARRAYFORMULA(IMPORTRANGE(
INDIRECT(ADDRESS(ROW(B2:B4), COLUMN(B2:B4)),
INDIRECT(ADDRESS(ROW(C2:C4), COLUMN(C2:C4))
)
where INDIRECT(ADDRESS(ROW(B2:B4), COLUMN(B2:B4)) is more or less interchangeable with what you might expect from B2:B4 inside ARRAYFORMULA and represents the url parameter
and INDIRECT(ADDRESS(ROW(C2:C4), COLUMN(C2:C4)) is roughly interchangeable with what you might expect from C2:C4 inside ARRAYFORMULA and represents the range parameter.
Suggestions on organization
I recommend using the indentation (Alt +Enter to create a new line ) above along with your indentation of choice to keep it easier to read. In the end it's just a bit more syntactic sugar and if spaces are used well it shouldn't be much harder to understand and make changes to 6 months later.
RE: Permissions - as mentioned by Atiq Zabinski, just placing a simple
IMPORTRANGE("http:/xxxx", "A1") somewhere on the sheet will provide a
means to know if the sheet is connected or not and the error message
should give you a context menu for connecting the sheet. You'll might
want to stay away from error handling in these scenarios as it will
slow down the process of connecting the sheets.
I have the following formula which is currently returning the expected results -
=join(",",query(importrange(vlookup(mid(G4,1,find(",",G4)-1),xref,2,false),vlookup(mid(G4,1,find(",",G4)-1),xref,3,false)),"Select Col3,Col6,Col9 where Col1 = '"&mid(G4,find(",",G4)+1,20)&"' "))
However, I naturally want to make this as dynamic and flexible as possible so I would like to "wrap" it in an arrayformula which ends up like this -
=arrayformula(join(",",query(importrange(vlookup(mid(G4:G,1,find(",",G4:G)-1),xref,2,false),vlookup(mid(G4:G,1,find(",",G4:G)-1),xref,3,false)),"Select Col3,Col6,Col9 where Col1 = '"&mid(G4:G,find(",",G4:G)+1,20)&"' ")))
This formula gives me "Unable to parse query string for Function QUERY parameter 2: NO_COLUMNCol3" error.
I tried to include an iferror to try to trap some error but this made no difference.
I tried various angles to debug and basically focussed on the importrange not providing the data to the query once it was wrapped by the arrayformula. I tried to explicitly reference the external sheet key and range in the importange function, instead of using the lookups, and this did give me a result - but only in the first cell. There should also have been a result returned about 4 rows down.
If I copy the formula down the column, I do get the expected result 4 rows down, but this obviously defeats the purpose of the arrayformula.
In my research in the Google forums there were some suggestions that arrayformula and importrange may not play well together, but no hard and fast facts.
I noticed in this forum that the combination of the two functions has been mentioned but no indication that they did not work together, so I am wondering if there is just some little thing I am missing in my syntax that is causing my ideal scenario not to work ?
I don't think this will work for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, not all the functions in Google Sheets can be automated using an arrayformula, and QUERY is one of them. As far as I know this is because the output of QUERY can be an array itself, so it is not possible to iterate an array output across another array (i.e. your results range).
Secondly, JOIN works across a either a single row or column, whereas your query outputs 3 columns. The arrayformula result would therefore consist of an array with multiple rows and columns, which JOIN cannot use.
I think the best solution is to use the IFERROR as you've described, and copy the single-row formula down the entire column - that way the blank records will not show as errors, but you will be able to add new values to column G and they will be picked up automatically.