+ Reply to Thread
Results 1 to 2 of 2

Nested lookup index reference functions

  1. #1
    Registered User
    Join Date
    12-01-2010
    Location
    stockholm
    MS-Off Ver
    Excel 2007
    Posts
    6

    Nested lookup index reference functions

    Hi all!
    I've been busting my a** for two days now trying to figure out this, but I won't get it to work . I have a table with about 18000 rows representing about 9000 field values of fields of a certain application. Each field value exists twice in the table, with one display value in Swedish and one in English. Example:
    Entity - Language - Display value - Language Independant Code
    Service Request - Swedish - Ändra Nummer - Change Number
    Service Request - English-American - Change Number - Change Number

    The problem is that the table is inefficient to use, so i tried to create two new columns, one with Swedish Display Value, and one with English Display Value. The cell in the ENG column will the be empty where the SWE cell is filled and vice versa. Example:
    Entity - Language - Display value - Language Independant Code - SWE - ENG
    Service Request - Swedish - Ändra Nummer - Change Number - Ändra Nummer -
    Service Request - English-American - Change Number - Change Number - - Change Number

    So what I want to do is to populate the empty language cell (either SWE or ENG) for one of these rows. Example:
    Entity - Language - Display value - Language Independant Code - SWE - ENG
    Service Request - Swedish - Ändra Nummer - Change Number - Ändra Nummer - Change Number

    This way, I can remove 50 percent of the rows and make the table easier to understand for less data focused minds. After this reshuffling has been done, I will "flatten" the table.

    I'm pretty sure that I will have to use a nested lookup, index or reference-function but there's always a part that I'm missing. I want to try to avoid any VB-scripts. Here's how I imagined a solution for population the SWE cells on the English-American rows, written in pseudo code.

    IF(ThisRow.Language="English-American";
    return DisplayValue with Matching LanguageIndependantCode but Language="Swedish";
    else return "")
    The problem is that vlookup will return the first value it finds, regardless if it's Swedish or English. So there must be another step, a step that I'm not able to formulate. In addition to this, there would need to be a matching against yet another column, but that's a minor problem once this one is solved.
    I've attached a sample.xlsx.

    Please, can anybody help me?

    Regards
    Sam
    Attached Files Attached Files

  2. #2
    Forum Expert mrice's Avatar
    Join Date
    06-22-2004
    Location
    Surrey, England
    MS-Off Ver
    Excel 2013
    Posts
    4,967

    Re: Nested lookup index reference functions

    Not sure that I understand completely but would it be more simple if you...
    • Added a new column with 1,2,3, etc
    • Sorted by the language
    • Use more simple formulae for the different blocks
    • Sort back using the new column
    Martin

+ Reply to Thread

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts

Search Engine Friendly URLs by vBSEO 3.6.0 RC 1