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
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
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()))))
SOLVED EDIT
Thank you for the help. Solution here.
ORIGINAL POST
I have made a google sheet to describe the issue I am facing linked here (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yK6ZAX8BFnEqiuQO9HIxuY0l62ewDDccj-8EN1r2i2w/edit?usp=sharing).
I will also describe in words, below, the problem I am facing, along with the solutions I have tried.
The data of column A are random single-digit (0-9). I would like column B to show the most recent even number from column A, but only up to a specific row. That specific row is the row corresponding to the row of the cell in column B. In other words, in cell B7, I want to find the most recently entered even number of column A, specifically only on the range A2:A7 (A1 contains a column header).
This is actually a pretty simple formula, and I can get the desired outputs by simply checking if the value in a cell in column A is even and then returning the value of that cell if it is, or the output of the cell above if it isn't. So the formula would look something like: =IF(ISEVEN(A7),A7,B6)
However, my problem is that the length of the data in column A will be growing as more data are entered, and my current solution of using the fill handle to copy the formula to new cells is inelegant and time-consuming. So my desired solution is to use an array formula entered into the first cell of column B (B2), capable of returning the same value as the other formula. The formula I tried to enter to perform this was the following: =ARRAYFORMULA(IF(ISEVEN(A2:A),A2:A,INDIRECT(ADDRESS(ROW(A2:A)-1,2))))
However, as some of my previous work with arrays has taught me, not all formulas iterate as expected down the array. The formula seems to be able to return the correct output on lines which are already even, but it is unable to return the expected most-recently entered even number for all the other lines. It appears that the formula is not able to appropriately interpret the value_if_false argument of the IF formula.
I'm a little new to scripting, so I'm still trying to learn, but I also tried to dabble around with custom functions to no avail. I'm still wet behind the ears when it comes to coding, which is why I've been so lenient on the built-in formulas of Google Sheets, but I fear I may have reached the limit of what Sheets formulas can do.
I am open to trying new approaches, but my only real constraint is that I would really like for this to be a one-touch (or even better no-touch) solution, hope that's not too far beyond the scope of this issue. Any assistance would be much appreciated.
EDIT
After rubber-ducking the problem here, I went back and tried to use the OFFSET formula, hoping I could get it to play nicely with the array formula. Alas, I was unable, but I thought I should at least post my progress here for reference.
Attempt with offset
Still working at it!
Doing a vlookup on the row number seems to work for me
=ArrayFormula(if(A2:A="","",vlookup(row(A2:A),{if(iseven(A2:A),row(A2:A)),A2:A},2)))
Note: if there are no even numbers in range for some rows, it will produce #N/A for those rows.
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 a google docs spreadsheet with two columns: A and B.
Values of B are just values from A in a different format, and I have a formula in the B column that does the conversion.
Sometimes I do not have the values in A format but I have them in B format. I would like to automatically get the values in A format in the A column by adding the formula that does the reverse conversion in the A column. This, of course, generates a circular reference. Is there a way to get around it?
On the top menu of a google spreadsheet do the following:
File > Spreadsheet settings
Choose the "Calculation" tab, and change "Iterative calculation" to ON.
Enjoy :D.
PD: I know that this post is too old, but just some days ago I needed a solution to this, and I couldn´t find any.
From this week, Google Sheets has announced support for exactly this feature. You can now limit the number of iterations for circular references in the spreadsheets settings :-)
In excel you can set it to allow circular dependencies and limit the number of iterations they run (usually 1 is the desired result).
I've looked and nothing like that exists in sheets.
I know that this post is pretty old, but I saw it while looking to see the applications of a thing.
In sheets, you can use importrange to reference the same sheet and call the desired range. For instance, you can put a formula in B1 that is =A1+1 and in A1 use the formula =importrange(<THIS SHEET ID>,"B1")+1.
You may need to initially put the formula in A2 and then move it up to A1, but it should work.
Doing something like this essentially makes a second counter, which is neat I guess?
Solved with a script that implements the following algorithm
for each row{
if (A != "" && B == "")
B = conversionFromA(A);
if (A == "" && B != "")
A = conversionFrom(B);}
of course it has it's downsides, (you have to call the script each time you enter new data), but it's the best solution I found
I would add two more columns: data source and data format. Then, the formula in column A would take a value from data source either as is (if the format matches) or converted (if format doesn't match). Same for column B.
Instead of referencing your co-dependent formula cells, use other cells to hold your actual (non-formulaic) data and use the formula cells to show your results.