WHEN SOFTWARE RESOURCES ARE LIMITED: EXCEL TIPS

Transcription

1 WHEN SOFTWARE RESOURCES ARE LIMITED: EXCEL TIPS A HANDOUT TO SUPPLEMENT SESSION W- 111 SRAI ANNUAL MEETING 2017 JUDY WILLIS ADMINISTRATOR OF GRADUATE RESEARCH ETHICS PROGRAMS SRAI ANNUAL MEETING OCTOBER 18, 2017

2 Table of Contents Introduction VLOOKUP - Looking up training completions from a table COUNTIF - Counting the number of occurrences of a training event LOOKUP Tips - Making sure your lookup values match 1) FIND/REPLACE 2) VALUE 3) TRIM Making the Results Pretty (while checking for incomplete training) IFNA Conditional LOOKUPS - IF - checking to see if a condition is true Multiple LOOKUPS 1) AND with IF - if multiple conditions are all true 2) AND with ISNA - if multiple conditions are all incomplete 3) OR with IF - if any of several conditions are true Text Strings - Converting names from two different systems to the same format 1) CONCATENATE and & 2) Convert First Last to Last, First Summary of Formulas Page This document may be shared and distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit licenses/by-nc/4.0/. Disclaimer: The examples used in the document are not real. The users names, their institutional IDs, career stages, and course completion data are fictitious; any resemblance to a real person is purely coincidental. Judy Willis Georgia Tech (judy.willis@gatech.edu) SRAI Annual Meeting W111 Handout Page 1

3 INTRODUCTION When software resources for creating custom RCR reports and queries are limited or delayed, it may be necessary to resort to spreadsheets as an interim solution. There are formulas and techniques which can help to quickly answer questions such as: Who has / has not completed online RCR training? How many in-person contact hours have workshop attendees received? Has the RCR training requirement been satisfied? The examples below demonstrate useful formulas and helpful tips for answering these questions and presenting the results in a useable format. (The formulas can of course be easily adapted to different situations and types of data other than RCR administration.) These examples are simplistic in nature but the techniques can be adapted to more complex situations. Disclaimer: The examples used in the document are not real. The users names, their institutional IDs, career stages, and course completion data are fictitious; any resemblance to a real person is purely coincidental. VLOOKUP This formula is very useful for comparing two or more large spreadsheets in order to quickly check for training completions, career stages, contact hours, etc. There must be a common LOOKUP VALUE such as a name or student ID number, and these names / numbers must be in the same format (refer to Lookup Tips). GOAL: With a list of 500 students who need online training and a list of 20,000 online completions, find out which of the 500 students have completed the online training*. Two tables of data: the completion records for all students have been exported to the spreadsheet on the right. The completion dates for the students who need RCR training will be pulled into the spreadsheet on the left from the one on the right. The common lookup value is the Georgia Tech ID (GTID). The online training used in these examples is referred to as CITI. The CITI Program is a Division of BRANY, and is the online training system that Georgia Tech uses. Judy Willis Georgia Tech (judy.willis@gatech.edu) SRAI Annual Meeting W111 Handout Page 2

4 VLOOKUP STEP 1 (Note that David Andrews did not log in through SSO, so he does not have an authenticated ID or username associated with his completion records. We need his authenticated GTID ( Auth GTID ) to look up his completions.) VLOOKUP STEP 2 Judy Willis Georgia Tech (judy.willis@gatech.edu) SRAI Annual Meeting W111 Handout Page 3

5 VLOOKUP STEP 3 Enter the Lookup value by placing the cursor in cell C2 - this is the value to be looked up in the CITI Completions table (in this example, it s the GTID). VLOOKUP STEP 4 4 A) Tab down to the Table_array box 4 B) Place the cursor in the CITI Completions tab. Enter the cell range in which you are looking up the data, which is from Col A through Col G ( A:G). Make a note of the column in which the value you are searching for is located. In this case it is the Completion Date in Col E - the 5th column over. (You ll use that info in the next step.) Judy Willis Georgia Tech (judy.willis@gatech.edu) SRAI Annual Meeting W111 Handout Page 4

6 VLOOKUP STEP 5 VLOOKUP STEP 6 Judy Willis Georgia Tech (judy.willis@gatech.edu) SRAI Annual Meeting W111 Handout Page 5

7 VLOOKUP STEP 7 IMPORTANT NOTES REGARDING VLOOKUP: If there are no matches found, your lookup values may be in different formats. Try forcing your lookup value to be a number by adding a +0 in Step 4, i.e. use Lookup_value C2+0 instead of C2. If there are still no matches found, your numbers may be in a text string format and need to be converted to a VALUE (see page 11) Alternatively you may have hidden blanks in your lookup values you can remove these with TRIM (see page 13) If you are looking up the closest match instead of an exact match, the lookup table (in this example the CITI Completions tab) must be sorted in order by lookup value. In this case, put TRUE instead of FALSE under Range_Lookup. (However, for online training completions, you will want an exact match.) Judy Willis Georgia Tech (judy.willis@gatech.edu) SRAI Annual Meeting W111 Handout Page 6

8 COUNTIF For counting the number of occurrences of something e.g. the number of 1-hour RCR workshop sessions attended by students who need in-person contact hours. Table 1: List of Student Researchers who are in need of in-person RCR contact hours, along with their respective usernames Table 2: List of Students and the RCR Workshop Sessions they have attended (each session worth 1 contact hour) GOAL: Count the number of occurrences of each username in Table 2 to determine the total number of Contact Hours each student has received (in this example, each session is worth 1 contact hour). Pull that number into the corresponding Contact Hour column in Table 1. You will use COUNTIF to find the answer. COUNTIF STEP 1 Place the cursor in cell D2 (the first Contact Hours cell) of the Student Researchers Table Click on the function symbol (fx ) and select COUNTIF. (In this example, both of the tables are different tabs of the same spreadsheet, Student Researchers and Workshop Attendance ) Judy Willis Georgia Tech (judy.willis@gatech.edu) SRAI Annual Meeting W111 Handout Page 7

9 COUNTIF STEP 2: The cursor should now be in the Range box COUNTIF STEP 3: Move the cursor to the Workshop Attendance Tab (Table 2). Workshop Attendance! will populate in the Range box automatically (you don t need to type it). Judy Willis Georgia Tech (judy.willis@gatech.edu) SRAI Annual Meeting W111 Handout Page 8

10 COUNTIF STEP 4: Enter the range of usernames that you will be searching in this example they are located in rows 2 to 16 in Table 2. Since you are searching for and summing multiple matching records within an exact range, you will need to confine the lookup precisely to rows 2 through 16. Enter it as either A$2:A$16 or as A:A. COUNTIF STEP 5: Enter the criteria for the search. In this case, the criteria is the username in Table 1 (we are trying to search for and count occurrences of each username). The usernames are in column C, starting in row 2. Type C2 in the Criteria Box (or place your cursor there). Click OK. Judy Willis Georgia Tech (judy.willis@gatech.edu) SRAI Annual Meeting W111 Handout Page 9

11 COUNTIF STEP 6: You should see the result for the first entry Travis Allen has attended one workshop and has 1 contact hour. COUNTIF STEP 7: Copy and paste the formula down the column. The number of contact hours for each student are now in column D! IMPORTANT TIP: If you want to use the results of this calculation elsewhere (which you likely will), it s preferable to preserve the Contact Hour VALUES, not the formula. (Refer to Value section, p. 11). Judy Willis Georgia Tech (judy.willis@gatech.edu) SRAI Annual Meeting W111 Handout Page 10

12 LOOKUP TIPS making sure your LOOKUP values match A common issue with VLOOKUP and other similar formulas is that the lookup values must be in the same format in order for a match to occur. For example, will not match in a search for Alternatively, a number might be imported from another system as a text string and will not match a number unless it is converted to a value. Or there may be leading or trailing blanks in a text string that cause a mis-match. 1) FIND/REPLACE - a quick fix for data format inconsistencies In this example, the lookup value has hyphens but the common data field in the other table does not have hyphens the lookup value must be converted to match. Student ID numbers (which may or may not be hyphenated) are a common example of this at Georgia Tech. - Find what: - Replace with: (nothing) Hyphens are now removed. 2) VALUE - when numbers are imported from other systems as text and need to be converted back to numbers The green triangle in the upper left-hand corner indicates that these numbers are actually stored as text. They will NOT match in a number lookup. This situation happens often when data is imported from other reports or systems. A solution is to convert the text string to a VALUE. Judy Willis Georgia Tech (judy.willis@gatech.edu) SRAI Annual Meeting W111 Handout Page 11

13 VALUE STEP 1 Insert a new column into which to calculate your VALUE formula. Place your cursor in B2 and Insert the VALUE function. Click OK. Alternatively you can type the formula directly into B2: =VALUE(A2) And then copy it down the column. In this case, skip to Step 4. VALUE STEP 2 Place the cursor in cell A2. Click OK. Judy Willis Georgia Tech (judy.willis@gatech.edu) SRAI Annual Meeting W111 Handout Page 12

14 VALUE STEP 3 Copy the formula from B2 all the way down. VALUE STEP 4 Copy Column B and paste it on top of itself as a Value (the clipboard with 123). This will get rid of your formulas and leave just the GTID Values. Then delete Column A. (Alternatively you can leave Column A there but if you do, remember to use Column B for your lookup.) Your data is ready for lookup! Copy and Paste Col B onto itself as a value Delete the original Col. A (GTID). GTID Value becomes the new Col. A. 3) TRIM - useful when you are using data exported from other systems which has fields with leading or training blanks. (Note that you can t see the trailing blanks, but they are there and will prevent a match.) Copy =TRIM(A2) all the way down. Copy Col B and paste it as a value, and delete Col A, just as you did in VALUE Step 4 Judy Willis Georgia Tech (judy.willis@gatech.edu) SRAI Annual Meeting W111 Handout Page 13

15 MAKING THE RESULTS PRETTY (while also checking for training completions) IFNA In our VLOOKUP example, the values that weren t found display as #N/A. To replace #N/A with something more descriptive, use IFNA. Remember that David Andrews did not go through SSO. He completed the training, but it doesn t show as complete in his records. Identity management through SSO is key! The formula =IFNA(D2, Not Complete ) Which means... IF D2 is #N/A then display Not Complete, otherwise display the value of D2. Copy this formula down column E. ISNA is a variation of IFNA which can be handy for checking for training completions too. Judy Willis Georgia Tech (judy.willis@gatech.edu) SRAI Annual Meeting W111 Handout Page 14

16 CONDITIONAL LOOKUPS (IF) Useful for checking whether a certain condition is true. For example, Faculty members are not required to complete RCR training for NSF projects. The Formula to be copied down is =IF(D2 = Faculty, Not Required, Required ) Which means... IF the person is a Faculty member THEN display Not Required, ELSE display Required. (Of course, you could always sort the data and filter on the Class column to easily eliminate the Faculty members from this list, but this is just a way to demonstrate the IF technique!) Judy Willis Georgia Tech (judy.willis@gatech.edu) SRAI Annual Meeting W111 Handout Page 15

17 MULTIPLE LOOKUPS 1) AND with IF In this example, we know the students Class (master s or undergrad) and the number of in-person contact hours they received. We need to determine if they have satisfied the in-person requirement (for Georgia Tech, that s a minimum of 1 hour for NSF undergrads and 2 hours for NSF master s students). We can find the answer with a combination of IF and AND. The AND formula for Master s Students is =AND(D2= Masters, F2>=2), which means... If the student is a master s student and if the contact hours is greater than or equal to 2, then return the value of TRUE. The AND formula for Undergrads is =AND(D2= Undergrad, F2>=1), which means... If the student is an undergrad and if the contact hours is greater than or equal to 1, then return the value of TRUE. Therefore, the AND with IF formula will check to see if either of these cases are true: =IF(AND(D2= Masters, F2>=2), Yes, IF(AND(D2= Undergrad, F2>=1), Yes, No )) Which means IF it s a master s student AND the hours are greater than or equal to 2, then YES the requirement is satisfied; ELSE IF it s an undergrad with hours greater than or equal to 1 then YES it s satisfied, ELSE NO it s not satisfied. After copying and pasting the formula down column G, you can easily see who has and who has not satisfied the in-person training requirement. Judy Willis Georgia Tech (judy.willis@gatech.edu) SRAI Annual Meeting W111 Handout Page 16

18 MULTIPLE LOOKUPS (Continued) 2) AND with ISNA In order to satisfy Georgia Tech s Academic RCR Policy for Master s Thesis Students, master s students must complete ONE of three different RCR training options. Notices about the training need to be sent to those who haven t satisfied the requirement. In this example, we can do lookups on each of the three options and then check to see if all three are #N/A (incomplete). To do this we need to use a combination of AND and ISNA. The ISNA formula to check for completion of online training is =ISNA(D2), which means... If the student s online training (cell D2) is #N/A (i.e. not complete), then return the value TRUE. Therefore the AND with ISNA formula to test for all three training completions is =AND(ISNA(D2), ISNA(E2), ISNA(F2)) Which means If online, master s AND doctoral courses are all incomplete, then it is TRUE that the requirement has not been satisfied. A notice should be sent out. Alternatively you can add an IF statement to indicate what action to take: = IF(AND(ISNA(D2), ISNA(E2), ISNA(F2)), Yes, No ) Which means if all three are #N/A then YES, send a notice, otherwise NO do not send a notice (since the requirement is satisfied when one of the three options is complete). Judy Willis Georgia Tech (judy.willis@gatech.edu) SRAI Annual Meeting W111 Handout Page 17

19 MULTIPLE LOOKUPS (Continued) 3) OR with IF In order to satisfy Georgia Tech s Academic RCR Policy for Doctoral Students, PhD students must complete BOTH online (CITI) training and an RCR Doctoral Course. In this example, we can do lookups on both requirements and then check to see if either of them are #N/A (incomplete). To do this we need to use a combination of OR and IF. (In this example we are also using ISNA.) The OR formula to check for lack of completion of either requirement is =OR(ISNA(D2), ISNA(E2)), which means... If either cell D2 or cell E2 is #N/A (i.e. incomplete), then return the value TRUE. Therefore the OR with IF formula to test for a missing training completion is: =IF(OR(ISNA(D2), ISNA(E2)), No, Yes ) Which means If the online training is incomplete (#N/A) OR if the doctoral course is incomplete (#N/A), then NO, the requirement is not satisfied, ELSE YES the requirement is satisfied. Another way to accomplish the same thing is to use AND combined with ISNUMBER: =IF(AND(ISNUMBER(D2), ISNUMBER(E2)), Yes, No ) Which means If the online training AND the doctoral course fields are both numbers, then YES, the requirement is satisfied, ELSE NO the requirement is not satisfied. There are usually multiple ways to accomplish the same goal. Judy Willis Georgia Tech (judy.willis@gatech.edu) SRAI Annual Meeting W111 Handout Page 18

20 TEXT STRINGS Converting names from two different systems to the same format Sometimes you need names to be in the same format - for example, for a roster or a list - but one source of data uses Last, First and another uses First Last. Or perhaps you have First Name in one column and Last Name in another column, but you need them both in the same column. CONCATENATE Fortunately, concatenating two text strings is really easy. All you need is to join them with the & symbol: The CONCATENATE formula in this example is =B2 & & A2 Which means Join the First name to the Last name with a space in-between. Alternatively you can write =CONCATENATE(B2,,A2). Another common formatting task is to take a name in Last, First format and convert it to First Last. A multi-step process is to use Data - Text to Columns to split the name into Last and First and then rearrange it using CONCATENATE. However, there is a one-step formula for this. It s complicated, but you don t have to understand it - it just works!: =TRIM(MID(A2&" "&A2,FIND (",",A2)+1,LEN(A2))) Judy Willis Georgia Tech (judy.willis@gatech.edu) SRAI Annual Meeting W111 Handout Page 19

21 Summary of Formulas WHEN SOFTWARE RESOURCES ARE LIMITED: EXCEL TIPS VLOOKUP(lookup_value, table_array, col_index_num, range_lookup) Looks for a value in the leftmost column of a table and returns a value in the same row from a column that you specify. The values to be returned must be to the right of the lookup value. Useful for looking up training completions from exported data. COUNTIF(range, criteria) Counts the number of cells within a range that meet the given criteria. Useful for counting the number of occurrences of a training event. VALUE(text) Converts a text string to a value. Useful for forcing lookup values to match. TRIM(text) Removes trailing and leading blanks from a text string. Useful for forcing lookup values to match. IF(logical_test, value_if_true, value_if_false) Checks whether a condition is met - then indicates what to do if it s met and what to do if it s not met. Useful for checking to see if training criteria have been met and taking an action depending on the results. AND(logical1, logical2, ) Returns TRUE if all are conditions are true; returns FALSE if one or more are false. Useful for checking for multiple conditions when all conditions are required to be true. OR(logical1, logical2, ) Returns TRUE if any are true; returns FALSE if none are true. Useful for checking for multiple conditions when only one or more is required. IFNA(value, value_if_na) Returns the value you specify if the result is #N/A, otherwise returns the result. Useful for making the results look nicer. ISNA(value) Returns TRUE if the result is #N/A, otherwise returns FALSE. Useful for testing whether or not training has been completed. &: Used to concatenate text strings. text1 & text2 is the same as CONCATENATE(text1,text2). Useful for making data exported from different systems look the same. Absolute References: These keep the row or column from changing when you copy a formula across or down. Put a $ before the row or column that you want to lock - for example, $A1 locks the column; $A$1 locks both the row and column. The F4 key will toggle the absolute reference on and off. Judy Willis Georgia Tech (judy.willis@gatech.edu) SRAI Annual Meeting W111 Handout Page 20