Excel Formula Efficiency 7: Helper Column Speeds Calculation

Hi all,

Recently the little popup box that appeared as you started to type a formula into a cell (generally after the first '(' ) has stopped appearing. An example would be =COUNTIF(range, criteria,count_range).

I know that it is available if you do help or if you click on the drop down in the formula bar, but that is a large time waster. This was a big help and reminder for me for formulas I didn't use all that often. Is there anyway to turn it back on? How did I turn it off?

Thanks for any help you can provide!

I want to add a formula helper like the builtin functions inside of excel have. Is it possible?

For example when you enter in a cell
=sum(

You get a little window that pops down below the fx box that says
SUM(number1, [number2], .....)

Is there a way to do this? I want it to be clear to users what i am asking for.

hi,

(file attached).

im trying to find a way to automate or at the very least speeden the entry of data that you can see in the 'data input' tab. The reason why the data is laid out in this way is so i can create a pivot chart from it showing number of orders split by branch/order type over time.

at the moment im using
=SUMPRODUCT(('w.e. 29th june'!$M$10:$M$105="st albans")*('w.e. 29th june'!$N$10:$N$105="E"),('w.e. 29th june'!$D$10:$D$105))

but i have to change it for every single cell for it to work properly, and thats just for 1 tab, i'd have to keep editing it everytime i added a new tab with a new weeks worth of information on it.

There MUST be a way to speed this up, or put in a better formula which can pull info from a data in a better way, but i dont know how else to go about it.

would really appreciate some help on this - even willing to pay coz im desperate!

I cannot find any information concerning a "helper Column" in the help files.
Could someone point me in the right direction as to how to find and use this
"helper column?

Thanks,

i am trying to use a forumla to create a helper column. if the 3 cells referenced do not contain a value, I want the formula to retun nothing. if the do contain a value I want the formula to count. this is the formula i am currently using and it is returning "false" when the referenced cells contain no values. +IF(MIN(D6,E6,F6)0,MAX($A$5:A5))+1,"")) any suggestions?

thanks - Tina

Good Morning, I am looking for a formula that will give be me the answer in cell A14, without having a helper column (Column C). Could someone please help me with this formula thanks in advance Stephen. **** ******************** ************************************************************************> Microsoft Excel - Book1 ___Running: 14.0 : OS = Windows XP (F)ile (E)dit (V)iew (I)nsert (O)ptions (T)ools (D)ata (W)indow (H)elp (A)bout C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 C6 C7 C8 C9 C10 C11 C12 C14 =
A B C D 1 70 155 3.2 2 63 150 -3.8 3 72 180 5.2 4 60 135 -6.8 5 66 156 -0.8 6 70 168 3.2 7 74 178 7.2 8 65 160 -1.8 9 62 132 -4.8 10 67 145 0.2 11 65 139 -1.8 12 68 152 1.2 13 14 0.4 Sheet1
[HtmlMaker 2.42] To see the formula in the cells just click on the cells hyperlink or click the Name box
PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE THIS TABLE IMAGE ON SAME PAGE! OTHEWISE, ERROR OF JavaScript OCCUR.

I have a situation where I need to compare week1 from one year to week1 from
another year. The problem is that I have the dates, amounts, and categories
in a raw dump from an external application in a text file and am able to
import it into Excel. The issue that I need to do is to be able to create
another column that will contain the week identifier based on the date
column.
example:

Category Date Amount
35 4/18/2005 120.00
35 4/18/2005 170.00
36 4/19/2005 322.00
..
..
..
45 4/22/2006 118.00
46 4/23/2006 131.00
45 4/23/2006 96.00

With a helper column, I should be able to create a pivot table that is based
on the helper column (week number), instead of the date so I can get totals
for the week instead of for the day. Does anyone have any suggestions on
how
to create this helper column? The data source has over 16000 lines and I
don't want to have to manually enter values (even with copy and paste) for
this many lines of data.

Any and all assistance will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Allen
ps Posted in admin as well (managed newsgroup). Now, I take it to the REAL
experts! Thanks.
--

I have a system with a complex Excel interface, running under VBA, storing
lots of data in Access via ADO. Some processes take several minutes to
complete, but the actual speed varies a lot, and at the moment things are
running very slowly. I'm using Office 2003, on a 1.86Ghz Core Duo machine
with 1Gb RAM. The processor doesn't run at more than 54% speed, suggesting
there's some form of bottleneck somewhere, but it's the variable nature of
the problem that's baffling. Sometimes I can get it to speed up, but it then
settles down to a slow speed again. Any ideas?

I have an HP 4315 All in One printer set up to my pc. I'm trying to pring an excel document that has different sheets. When i try printing one of the sheets, it prints it out in about 3 or 4 seconds. When i try to print another sheet with similar information, it takes about 5 minutes just for one page. Does anybody know why?? I would greatly appreciate the help.

Ok, I have a column with a number in it, and each particular number is assigned to a Sales Person.

There is actually a range of different numbers that is assigned to the same person.

So I know how to do this in SQL, but am not sure how to do this in an Excel formual, so example:

numbers that are IN (1234,5678,123123,234234,234234,123123,123123) belong to Jane Smith

numbers that are IN (123123,345345,54256456,789789,234234,9789789) belong to Frank Meyer

The thing is that each cell in the column only contains one number, so I need a formula that will scan
the whole column and in a helper column assign the known number to a name and write that name into a cell
and then go down to the next row in that column, any ideas how this can be done in Excel ?

Thanks a head of time for your time.