This is my first time posting to this forum, and I am very new to working with Excel. I tried to find information through various searches, but I was not able to construct a good search query, due to my ignorance of the topic.
If you could read through the scenario I present and either help answer a specific item, or suggest a searches I could try, I would be grateful.
Here is what I am trying to do:
I have a spreadsheet with business contacts.
Each cell in Column F lists all of the subscriptions the person in the row has, as a list (array?) delimited by semi-colons. This information comes from a database.
I want to create a new column, Column G, in which each cell displays "TRUE" if Column F contains a specific subscription name.
For example, if F:30 contains the following list:
"*apples; *bananas; *cherries; *dates"
I want G:30 to look for "*bananas" and if it finds that term, it displays "TRUE," indicating that the user in that row is subscribed to "*bananas."
(I included the asterisk because we prefix all subscription names with the asterisk, and I thought it's something that might cause an issue at some point.)
I then want to hide Column F, so that what I wind up with is just a list of contacts, and an indication of whether or not they have a subscription to *bananas, regardless of any other subscriptions they might have.
These are the things I can't figure out on my own:
1. How to refer to the immediate neighboring cell for two entire columns. I.e., how to make any cell in Column G refer to its neighboring cell in Column F.
2. How to do the find. I tried "=FIND("*bananas",F2)>0" based on another search, but this just gave me the "#VALUE" display. Maybe this is due to the asterisk?
3. How to use the outcome of the FIND function to display a "TRUE" if there is a FIND result.
I really appreciate any guidance.
If you could read through the scenario I present and either help answer a specific item, or suggest a searches I could try, I would be grateful.
Here is what I am trying to do:
I have a spreadsheet with business contacts.
Each cell in Column F lists all of the subscriptions the person in the row has, as a list (array?) delimited by semi-colons. This information comes from a database.
I want to create a new column, Column G, in which each cell displays "TRUE" if Column F contains a specific subscription name.
For example, if F:30 contains the following list:
"*apples; *bananas; *cherries; *dates"
I want G:30 to look for "*bananas" and if it finds that term, it displays "TRUE," indicating that the user in that row is subscribed to "*bananas."
(I included the asterisk because we prefix all subscription names with the asterisk, and I thought it's something that might cause an issue at some point.)
I then want to hide Column F, so that what I wind up with is just a list of contacts, and an indication of whether or not they have a subscription to *bananas, regardless of any other subscriptions they might have.
These are the things I can't figure out on my own:
1. How to refer to the immediate neighboring cell for two entire columns. I.e., how to make any cell in Column G refer to its neighboring cell in Column F.
2. How to do the find. I tried "=FIND("*bananas",F2)>0" based on another search, but this just gave me the "#VALUE" display. Maybe this is due to the asterisk?
3. How to use the outcome of the FIND function to display a "TRUE" if there is a FIND result.
I really appreciate any guidance.
Last edited: