Is there anyway to add a $ in front of all the cell references for formulas in my Google Spreadsheets without hand typing them in?
Ex: =Sheet1!H164 -> =Sheet1!$H$164
I have hundreds of formulas I need to do this for. I understand that F4 is a hotkey, but it would take years to lock the cell references that way.
For a column of formulae such as you show, select the column, Edit, Find and Replace..., Find !H. Replace with !$H$, check Also search within formulae and Done. Need to watch the likes of Wow!How was that possible but an entire sheet this way rarely takes a lot of Find/Replace, if reasonably well-structured.
I also recommend to use Find and replace (e.g. Find !A. Replace with !$A$)
But attention: If your sheet has entries in more than 26 columns, you would affect columns after Z, e.g. AA1 would become $A$A1 which will fail. You have to go through them afterwards manually and correct.
My solution is to use the INDIRECT formula.
Let's take an easy example. We want to apply =$A$1 to the entire a row.
Replace =$A$1 with =indirect("$A$"&row(A1)).
The INDIRECT formula can be dragged down as far as you want or combined with ARRAYFORMULA to do it automatically e.g.
=arrayformula(indirect("$A$"&row(A1:A100)))
(if you want to apply absolute referencing up to the row 100).
Related
My problem is probably trivial ... However, I was looking for similar problems and their solutions either do not work for me or I can not apply them.
I have 2 sheets - SheetA and SheetB. They are identical. I want to select every cell in SheetA that is no longer identical to Sheet B.
I was able to use (found here on Stack Overflow) such a function in conditional formatting:
= A1 <> INDIRECT ("SheetB! A" & ROW ())
It works if the range is column A. I know that I can apply this function to each column separately, but there is certainly a way that I can apply the same formula to the whole worksheet.
Will there be anyone who can show me the correct formula?
Edit: I tried to use above formula to every column... And my file become to work very slow... So whoever wants to do the same... think again.
After some tries I decided to move everything from SheetB to SheetA. I paste it a 1000 rows under data of Sheet A. Works fine without "indirect" function. No slow downs. It is not a perfect solution but it works.
But even after my problem is solved different way, I would like to know what is the correct formula for my problem... it might be useful for the future with smaller amount of data.
Solved ;)
You should be able to use the Address function to get the address of the current cell from its row and column:
=A1<>indirect("sheetB!"&address(row(),column()))
or for case-sensitive match:
=not(exact(A1,indirect("sheetB!"&address(row(),column()))))
I'm making a spreadsheet that includes a long list of values, with a column that contains a total of values, and after that an average of the values in the row. I need the averaged column to always be 1/6 of the value in the summed column, but I can't figure out a way to make it automatically calculate it for me for each new row.
So far, I have been doing it all manually (type out all the values, manually add them together for the total, then divide by 6 myself for the average) but I'd really like to automate the math parts. I have not found a single way to properly do this - using "=DIVIDE(K2,6)" as a modified version of a suggestion on this other question (modified to use the column I'm actually putting the numbers in) does literally nothing, and I'd have to manually change and paste it into each row, which is actually harder and more tedious than continuing to do the math myself.
Here's an example image of what my columns look like. All the math is correct so far, I just want to automate it so I can type fewer numbers:
EDIT: Combined answers from Scott and Player0 is what worked! thanks for being patient with me! I was able to also use that to make the Sum column function automatically as well, so both columns are fully automated now! :D
You don't have to enter the formula manually on every line.
Enter =K2/6 in cell L2; then select cell L2
and drag/fill it down to L12.
(That means click on the dot in the lower right corner of the cell
and drag it down.)
Or however far your sheet actually goes.
That will automatically fill in L3 with =K3/6,
L4 with =K4/6, and so on.
use on row 2:
=INDEX(IFERROR(K2:K/6; 0)
also see: ArrayFormula of Average on Infinite Truly Dynamic Range in Google Sheets
Is there a way to speed up the editing of hundreds of lines of formulas across many tabs in the same Google Sheet?
This is a followup question to: References changing in Google Sheets with new forms submissions ; which is about every time a new row is added in Google Sheets by a new submission from a Google Forms, some formulas change their references even if they are fixed with $ (Still no idea why that happens). The solution is to add INDIRECT to the formulas. However, there are too many formulas to comfortably change manually.
For example I have formulas like:
=COUNTIFS('Resp'!$AM$56:$AM,"Conf",'Resp'!$B56:$B,"PC
Arr")
It needs to change to :
=COUNTIFS(INDIRECT("Resp!$AM$2:$AM"),"Conf",indirect("Resp!$B2:$B"),"PC
Arr")
Search and replace wouldn't work because the way formulas are written, and there are quite varied types of formula and referenced columns (although the reference must change from 56 to 2) and the " ' " in the middles need to disappear.
Is there a way to speed up these changes even a bit or is it inevitable manual labor?
the only way how to mass-change formulas in Google Sheets is via CTRL + H where you can do it like this:
I found a mechanical way to lessen the amount of work to change many different formulas, but let me start with a general case first.
Option 1- For when the same formula repeats identically.
Search and replace (Ctrl+H) works well if you have the same formulas repeated all over. In this case it's viable to change massively, or once and then drag as needed.
However...
Option 2- When you have dozens of formulas that may be just slightly different or just too similar that 'Search and replace' (Ctrl+H) wouldn't work.
More so, if it's just so different that you cant drag the formula (like the reference changing to a new column and writing a different text based on that), then unfortunately you need to manually change things.
The solution I'm using to lessen the work was to use a programmable keyboard (in my case programmable+multimedia keyboard - Steren COM-6490 , up to 15 macros).
I used it to write down: INDIRECT(" , ") and $2 mainly, and then all the other mayor parts of text,references or formulas that do repeat with just 1 key each. Making a duplicate of your current formula on another sheet and have it open too in order to copy-paste stuff to complement the formulas also helps.
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.
In Google Docs Spreadsheets, one can use Range Names to put labels on ranges of cells to make formulas more legible. In most formulas, one can use the range C:C to denote the entire C column, and C2:C to denote the entire C column after and including C2.
Is there a way to create range names of the same nature? When I try C:C or C2:C or Sheet!C:C or 'Sheet'!C:C I always get the error "The range you specified is not in a valid range format." I would like the range name to expand as my form adds rows to my spreadsheet. Thanks.
I just discovered the if you use the '-' operator, it starts from the bottom row. So,
=INDIRECT("-D:D12")
starts from the last row and works it's way up to D12!
I had a similar problem. Although I do not know how to do exactly what you are asking, you can do essentially the same thing by referencing cells that are not yet created.
For example:
Column C currently has 100 cells (100 rows in the sheet)
Instead of referencing it with C:C, use C1:C999
If you make the row reference high enough, then you can account for future rows that you will create. Hope it helps.
I don't think so... even if you select a column manually while in the Range Name selector, it complains. That would be a nice feature and it would make sense since they support column ranges for formulas already.
I believe this does work now. I have a range name of "Sheet1!A10:AW10" with no problems.
If you try to do a whole column, I think it will just take all the available cells in the column at that time. i.e. if you make more cells later, you need to manually add to the range name.
I had the same problem with ranges such as A3:A which normally work in other places such as ARRAYFORMULA(), but the workaround is to not specify the starting row, such as A:A. In cases when this would be a problem, you can proxy the data through another column using something like ARRAYFORUMULA(A25:A) as the formula.
Update: Apparently I haven't read the question properly. I see that the OP had tried leaving out the row number, so perhaps it wasn't working at that time, but it does now. The notations still don't work.
Update2: I didn't notice that google spreadsheet replaces ranges like A:A to A1:A50, so new rows added later on do not still get included. That I think is what #Dean is trying to say in his answer.
I think it's a helpful tool to use Insert -> Define new range to make a wizard appear and make the syntax correct. Hehe
My response in other topic