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In this example, the goal is to create initials or acronyms with a formula using the data in column B as the source text. The formula should parse the text in column B, build a list of capital letters used to start words and join the capital letters together in a single text string. The article...Read more

This example uses the UNIQUE function together with the FILTER function. Working from the inside out, the FILTER function is first used to remove any blank values from the data:

FILTER(B5:B16,B5:B16<>"")

The <> symbol is a...Read more

In this example, the goal is to subtotal (count and sum) values based on cell color. This is a tricky problem, because there is no Excel function that will let you count cells by color directly. There are several different approaches, as explained below.

Standard formula logic...Read more

In this example, the goal is to extract the numbers from a set of property listings which describe the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, the size of the house in sq. ft., and the size of the lot in acres. Traditionally, this kind of problem has been quite difficult in Excel because each number...Read more

In this example, the goal is to use XLOOKUP to find the first "red" or "pink" record in the data as shown. All data is in an Excel Table named data in the range B5:E14. This means the formulas below use structured...Read more

The goal in this example is to use a formula to report which things exist in a cell. The list of things to check for is in the named range things (E5:E9). The result is returned as a comma separated text string.

The first step in...Read more

The LARGE function is an easy way to get the nth largest value in a range:

 =LARGE(range,1) // 1st largest
 =LARGE(range,2) // 2nd largest
 =LARGE(range,3) // 3rd largest

In this example, we can use the LARGE function to get a highest score...Read more

Normally, the XLOOKUP function is configured to look for a value in a lookup array that exists on the worksheet. However, when the criteria used to match a value becomes more complex, you can use Boolean logic to create a lookup array on the fly composed...Read more

The goal in this example is to sum Prices in column C when the Items in column B contain an asterisk (*). The challenge is that the asterisk (*) is reserved as a wildcard in functions like the SUMIFS function, so you can't match a literal occurrence of this character without using a...Read more

In this example, the goal is to calculate a count for the longest winning streak in a set of data. In the worksheet shown, wins ("W") and losses ("L") are recorded in column C, so this means we want to count the longest consecutive series of W's. Although we are specifically counting the...Read more

In this example, the goal is to count rows that are visible and ignore rows that are hidden. This is a job for the SUBTOTAL function. SUBTOTAL can perform a variety of calculations like COUNT, SUM, MAX, MIN, and more. What makes SUBTOTAL interesting and...Read more

In a nutshell, this formula uses the LARGE function to find the nth largest value in a set of data. Once we have that value, we plug it into a standard INDEX and MATCH formula to retrieve the associated name. In other words, we use the nth largest value...Read more

This example uses the UNIQUE function to extract unique values. When UNIQUE is provided with the range B5:B16, which contains 12 values, it returns the 7 unique values seen in D5:D11. These are returned directly to the COUNTA function as an array like this:

...Read more