Find the cell range of the cells containing the same (string) values in a sorted column and pass it to a MIN function

[Jiinglelocks]

Hello, I'm not sure if I'm asking my question correctly but hopefully I can make it clear. This is an example of my data:

I have animal names, a distance in meters and a "closest" column, in which I need to display a "Y" next to the minimum distance of that group (so the minimum distance of the Adder distances, the minimum distance of the American Mink distances and so on...).

I have this formula working which applies to a cell range that I pre-define, this is for Adders:

But I need the range to be dynamic. Ideally excel or VBA would figure out that "Adder" is contained in the range A2:A12 and find the minimum value in the same range of the adjacent column. I have hundreds of animal names to go through so I can't really add the names individually. Is what I'm asking possible?

Thank you for your time!

 

[jasonb75]

Try

=IF(B2=MINIFS(B:B,A:A,A2),"Y","")

Or, if you can sort by name and distance, then

=IF(A2=A1,"",B2)

should work.

 

[Jiinglelocks]

@jasonb75 thank you for this, the MINIFS snippet works perfectly! Would you mind explaining how it works? I tried something like this with MINIFS but since I'm new to programming/excel formulae in general I couldn't quite sort it out.

 

[jasonb75]

The MINIFS part is looking for the distance for the common name on the current row, if you entered it alone, =MINIFS(B:B,A:A,A2) then it would give the minimum distance for 'Adder' in every cell from C2 to C12. By using IF to compare that result to the distance in the current row we can determine if that row holds the minimum distance, or if it contains something else and return either "Y" or "" (blank) accordingly.