jasonb75
Well-known Member
- Joined
- Dec 30, 2008
- Messages
- 15,520
- Office Version
- 365
- Platform
- Windows
Hi all,
I think that the person I'm doing this for is coming up with an impossible idea, I've been scratching my head over this for a couple of days and have nothing more than fingers full of splinters
I have a feeling that this may be one of those things that if it is possible, is likely to also be impractical. At the moment I'm just looking at ideas and opinions rather than trying to get a full blown solution, unless of course there is somebody out there that can see something I'm missing that makes this incredibly simple.
I don't currently have a sample sheet to work with at present,
We're starting with 2 columns of data. Ultimately they will be on separate sheets, but for now I'm using columns A and C in the same sheet.
Column C is a list of unique names, think data validation source.
Column A will contain selections made from that list, so some might appear once, some multiple times, and others not at all.
The seemingly impossible task that has been thrown at me, is to sort the unique list to populate a combobox from these lists in the following order (please assume data extends down to A100 for this example).
Steps 3 and 4 show fixed ranges in the example but would ideally be x and y number of rows starting from the bottom. In the event that there are less rows than set by the variable then simply use all available rows, skipping step 4 if all rows are used by step 3.
I think that covers everything.
Thank you in advance for any suggestions that you may have.
I think that the person I'm doing this for is coming up with an impossible idea, I've been scratching my head over this for a couple of days and have nothing more than fingers full of splinters

I have a feeling that this may be one of those things that if it is possible, is likely to also be impractical. At the moment I'm just looking at ideas and opinions rather than trying to get a full blown solution, unless of course there is somebody out there that can see something I'm missing that makes this incredibly simple.
I don't currently have a sample sheet to work with at present,
We're starting with 2 columns of data. Ultimately they will be on separate sheets, but for now I'm using columns A and C in the same sheet.
Column C is a list of unique names, think data validation source.
Column A will contain selections made from that list, so some might appear once, some multiple times, and others not at all.
The seemingly impossible task that has been thrown at me, is to sort the unique list to populate a combobox from these lists in the following order (please assume data extends down to A100 for this example).
Steps 3 and 4 show fixed ranges in the example but would ideally be x and y number of rows starting from the bottom. In the event that there are less rows than set by the variable then simply use all available rows, skipping step 4 if all rows are used by step 3.
- Heading (most likely from a string variable)
- Name in A100
- Unique Names from A90:A99 (excluding Name from A100 if repeated) sorted by count of records in A80:A99 (just to confirm, that is not a typo).
- Unique Names from A80:A89 (excluding Names from previous 2 steps if repeated) sorted by count of records in A80:A89.
- Another heading from a string variable
- Entire list from column C in alphabetical order (including anything previously listed in steps 2-4).
I think that covers everything.
Thank you in advance for any suggestions that you may have.