Month: October 2022

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A Spreadsheet is Creative (Part 3)

Now, I need to start to pull the post type, time of post and post content from the Content sheet. Starting with the post type (which resides in Column C), the following INDEX function in cell B6 will do the trick:
=INDEX(Content!$C$1:$C$1187,B5,1)
This index formula uses the value from B5 to find the entry in row 530. And yes, at this point that is only the first entry for the day.

Index and If function results

Now, I’ll use an IF statement to build the formulas you see in column C6:
=IF(ROW()<6+C$5,”yes”,”stop”)
At this stage in the process I usually use the IF statement to display a label. “Yes”, means there is matching data in the source sheet. “Stop” means there is no longer matching data. The test in column F shows the formula is working.
Now I’ve proven that the each formula works in turn, I can combine them into a larger “mega” formula. Don’t forget that when building these larger formulas you can; expand the formula bar and use Alt+Enter to force the formula to wrap for easier reading.
Like this:
=IF(ROW()<5+(COUNTIFS(Content!$E:$E,”>=”&B$4,Content!$E:$E,”<“&B$4+1)),
INDEX(Content!$C:$C,(MATCH(B$4,Content!$E:$E,0)),1),”stop”)
You’ll notice that I’ve also stopped referring to a specific range in column E/C and instead reference the entire column. It doesn’t make any difference to the result of this formula and makes it a bit simpler to read. Also the Row adjustment number changes from 6 to 5 as I play with the layout of the spreadsheet. Changing the layout includes reordering the data, so that the time of the post comes first and adding a column that shows the path to any images used in the post.

Here’s a shot of the results of that formula:

The formula is expanded to more columns Now I’m capturing more columns of data

You’ve undoubtedly spotted that only the first entry is being captured and repeated. I’ll adjust the formula to correct that problem in my next post.

I offer Excel template design services and training. Feel free to send me an email.

Headline Image from William Iven

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A Spreadsheet is Creative (Part 2)

Continuing from my previous post, showing my process in designing a spreadsheet.

Its’ starting to look a little bit like a calendar

Here I’ve placed each Day/Date heading over 3 columns (later I figured out I needed 4). Its’ starting to look a little bit like a calendar.

One of the things making the design of this calendar a little more challenging is that each day has a different number of posts. Anywhere between 2-20 depending on the days activities (library author quizzes, anyone?). So my formula needs to account for a variable number of entries each day, I can’t simply copy 20 lines and call it done. So, how will I do that?

Finding where each day starts and the number of entries on that date

I’ve put the following formula into B5, it will find the row that each days’ entries begin on:
=MATCH(B$4,Content!$E1:$E1187,0)
Here the MATCH function does the trick of looking on the Content sheet (where my database lives) and counting down the rows to find the date that matches, then it returns the value of the rows counted.
In C5 I’m using the following formula to count the number of entries on that date:
=COUNTIFS(Content!$E$1:$E$1187,”>=”&B$4,Content!$E$1:$E$1187,”<“&B$4+1)
The reasoning behind using COUNTIFS this way is because when dates are entered in the content sheet, sometimes a time is entered as well. The time remains unseen because of the formatting applied to the date column. I need to ensure I get every entry regardless of whether a time is present or not. Using COUNTIFS to count in a range will do this.

I’ll continue with the design process in my next post.

I offer Excel template design services and training. Feel free to send me an email.

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A Spreadsheet is Creative – Part 1

Creating a spreadsheet is a creative act. The choices made about data, formulas, layout and colour all contribute to communicating clearly. Communicating clearly and well is, in my book a creative process.

So, I thought I’d walk through my process in designing a spreadsheet to take information from what is essentially a database layout:

This database view works fine for an Excel Nerd like me.

Into this view, a classic calendar view of the same information:

A weekly calendar view of the same information.

I’m planning to use the calendar view to share a social media posting schedule, as the people I’m sharing with aren’t Excel savvy (and why should they be?). I create the posting schedule in Excel, because I can easily save it in .csv format and upload it to Google Calendar. However, sharing the Google Calendar has drawbacks too, and it is simpler to print out a weekly calendar showing the planned posts.
When I began this process, I had some things sketched out in my mind. I wanted to enter a date and see the week around it. I always want to see the posts for the date in the context of the posts for the days around it. I also want a consistent layout of days – Sunday to Monday. Having the starting day of the week change each time would make it harder for my viewers.
That means I’m going to need to dynamically generate the dates based on the day of the week of my starting date. You can see my first pass below:

Dynamically generating the date based on the day of the week

I labelled cell A1 WeekStart, this will help me remember the purpose of the contents of cell A1.
I’ve labelled the days of the week, and above them in row 2, given each day a number 1-7. The day numbers relate to the way the WEEKDAY function works. I’ll be using the mode where the week starts numbering 1 on Sunday. Later I’ll hide that row, but for now having it visible is helpful.
You can see that I’m stepping out the formula in rows 4 – 6. When I’m designing a spreadsheet, I’ll often step formulas out like this. It helps me avoid errors and makes each step clear. Later I’ll consolidate the steps.
In row 4, I’m calculating the following:
=(WEEKDAY(WeekStart,1))-B$2.
You can think of it as a way to calculate the number of days (+/-) from my start date. By the way, I chose to start with May 1, because it was on a Wednesday. That made sure I could test my formulas well, a Saturday or Sunday starting day would make testing harder.
Once I know I can count backwards and forwards from my starting date, I use the following formula:
=WeekStart-((WEEKDAY(WeekStart,1))-B$2)
The WEEKDAY function calculates the day number of the week. Here, it returns the number 4(Wednesday).
From the number 4 I subtract the value in row 2. This gives me the number of days to subtract from the WeekStart value. You can see the results in rows 5 and 6. Row 5 is simply the unformatted date value, since sometime I find visualizing the pure number easier.

This turned out to be a 5 part series! I hope you’ll find the next 4 parts interesting.

I’ll continue with the design process in my next post.

I offer Excel template design services and training. Feel free to send me an email – catharine@mytechgenie.ca

Headline Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash

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The Word Navigation Pane

The Navigation Pane

Among the many reasons I love Word Styles, is how it makes the Navigation Pane more powerful and easier to use.

Find Navigation Pane on the View Ribbon

Turn on the Navigation Pane by going to the View Tab, Show Group and checking the Navigation Pane check box.

Unformatted text on the page and in Navigation Pane

At this point, if your text is unformatted, the Navigation Pane will not look that useful. But, watch what happens when I add styles to the unformatted text.

Text Formatted with Styles appears both on the page and in the Navigation Page

Now the text appears in the Navigation Page in the same style hierarchy used in the document. Now I can use the Navigation Page to quickly move around the document by clicking on the text I want to jump to.

Text can be collapsed and expanded

If there is a lot of text, it can be collapsed and expanded using the triangle buttons.
The Navigation Pane can be used for more than navigation, it can also be used to reorder/reorganize text in the document. For example, perhaps I wish to move the section on the “The Adventures of Pinocchio” after “Aladdin”. I can do this easily by clicking on that heading in the Navigation Pane and dragging it below the heading I want it to follow.

Results of using the Navigation Pane to reorder my document

Not only is that heading moved but all the subtext beneath it is moved as well. Fast and easy document reorganization!

I offer Word template design services and training. Feel free to send me an email.
Featured image from
oxana v