Excel formula help please?

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melsan

1 post

Wannabe Geek

#105910 13-Jul-2012 16:19

Hi there,
I am after some help from an excel expert for a formula that has me stumped.
I have a tracking spreadsheet with two tabs, tab one is the main results page and the other tab is the "tracking" page.
I have a dates column in the tracking page where the result is counted once a date is entered.

I have used this formula to report this through to the main page like this =COUNTIF('OTRs'!I5:I30,"<01/10/12")

My issue is the main tab I need to show these result for different quarters. 1st quarter 1July-30Sep, 2nd quarter 1Oct-31Dec and so on.

I have these results counting once a date is put in, but I now need to be able to put a formula in each quarter section so it will only pick up the dates for that particular quarter so somehow say "between 1Oct and 31 Dec" etc etc, in addition to my existing formula.

Hopefully this makes sense, I am terrible at explaining.

If anyone can help out that would be fantastic!

mthand

148 posts

Master Geek

#655348 14-Jul-2012 08:05

Hi melsan

It sounds to me like you want to count a result if it satisfies multiple criteria. Using COUNTIF will mean you are restricted to one.

Have you tried COUNTIFS for multiple criteria?

Ouranos

118 posts

Master Geek

#655358 14-Jul-2012 09:42

Perhaps something like the following?

This is an array formula, so in my example enter the formula =SUM(IF($A$2:$A$25>=C2,IF($A$2:$A$25<D2,1,0))) (ie. without the curly brackets) in cell E2, enter it using CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER (which will enter the curly brackets), then copy down.

If you edit the formula, always enter it using CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER.

Ouranos

118 posts

Master Geek

#655802 15-Jul-2012 08:29

Thinking about this further, it occurs to me that there are (at least) three errors in my formula above.

Anyone want to point out what those errors might be?

alasta

6705 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Subscriber

#655828 15-Jul-2012 09:10

Here is another approach that you might want to consider.

In this example columns D and E are a definition of each month of the year and which quarter it should belong to. For example January belongs in quarter 1, December belongs in quarter 4, etc.

If you look at my formula that I have filled throughout column B, it examines the date of a particular transaction and uses the lookup table to determine the quarter in which the transaction occurred. You can then use column B as the criteria for a COUNTIF or SUMIF formula.

Ouranos

118 posts

Master Geek

#655848 15-Jul-2012 10:07

alasta: Here is another approach that you might want to consider.

Your solution also contains latent errors, because the VLOOKUP refers to whole columns:
1. if any of the integers 1-12 are entered into the cells above D3 (perhaps after rows have been inserted), then the VLOOKUP will return incorrect results
2. if the "Lookup Table" is moved to another part of the spreadsheet, then the formulae in cells B3:B10 will not adjust to reflect the new location, so they will return incorrect results.

If the VLOOKUP formula referred only to cells D3:E14 (rather than the whole columns) then neither of these problems would occur.