Comments on: Formula Challenge

By: Dave W.

Dave W. — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 20:52:00 +0000

Do the row headers have to alternate? Can’t you sort the entire list by column A and then your array defintions are much easier. Or does that violate the “no helper columns” rule?

By: Bernie Deitrick

Bernie Deitrick — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 13:23:00 +0000

Blogging/comment adding software should be smart enough to treat everything the great unwashed public posts as if it were code, so that our 's, and geeks-know-what-else don't disappear.

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 12:03:00 +0000

John -

"font-family: verdana, times new roman, times, serif;"

Isn't it conventional to use a nonproportional font, like Courier, for the pre tag content?

- Jon

By: doco

doco — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 11:36:00 +0000

Honestly, I have never been able to figure out the desire to build mega formulas (not that y’all do)? Learning VB/VBA (or swahilie) is much the simpler than either building space shuttles or mega formulas; and much easier to understand more than 24 hours (or 24 minutes) after creation.

The formula listed above is a real jaw dropper and I still have no idea what it’s doing? Is there a trick to disecting those things?

By: John Mansfield

John Mansfield — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 08:13:00 +0000

Dick - Along the lines of Rob's comment - I've had pretty good luck with the pre tag i.e.

Code or Formulas here

To control the look of the contents within the pre tags, I've set my style sheet up like this:

/*Code*/
pre {
font-size: 12px;
font-family: verdana, times new roman, times, serif;
font-weight: normal;
color: #000;
border: 1px solid #000;
margin: 6px 60px;
padding: 5px 8px;
background: #FFFFCC;
}

Then, I have to define greater than, less than, and ampersand symbols to their ASCII equivilents within the pre tags. At that point the code or formulas will validate to XHTML (hopefully).

I could build a space shuttle in my back yard faster than it took me to figure out how all of this worked.

By: Dick Kusleika

Dick Kusleika — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 04:19:00 +0000

Ooh, it even puts in monospace - mispellings and all. That's using:

Stuff goes here

By: Dick Kusleika

Dick Kusleika — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 04:18:00 +0000

the code tag may work too, let's try:

if i >= 1 adn i

By: Prasanna

Prasanna — Fri, 22 Apr 2005 04:10:00 +0000

The following array formula also gives the answer.

Formula in B11

{=LARGE(IF(($A$2:$A$9=$A11)*($B$1:$H$1=B$10),$B$2:$H$9),1)+LARGE(IF(($A$2:$A$9=$A11)*($B$1:$H$1=B$10),$B$2:$H$9),2)}

Prasanna

By: Rob van Gelder

Rob van Gelder — Thu, 21 Apr 2005 23:54:00 +0000

I've seen the pre tag used on other tech blogs.

I'm not sure if it works here... let's try:

if i >= 1 and i > 1 or i 15 or "i" & 1 & 5 = 1 then msgbox ">= > ="

By: Bernie

Bernie — Thu, 21 Apr 2005 21:46:00 +0000

Thanks, Dick, for explaining that.

Here's a test of the escape code version:

=MAX(($A$2:$A$8=$A11)*($B$2:B$8))+MAX(($A$2:$A$8=$A11)*($B$2:B$8)*((ROW($B$2:B$8))<>(MAX(IF(($A$2:$A$8=$A11)*($B$2:B$8)=MAX(($A$2:$A$8=$A11)*($B$2:B$8)),ROW($B$2:B$8))))))

Bernie