testing range of cells for part of cell content

[Daniel]

Hi, I'm new to advanced excel formulas so please bear with me.

So I'm trying to make a formula that sums only certain values in a range of
cells. The problem is I need to manipulate each cell content before
testing/adding to the sum (but not do this permanently of course). For
example, if i have a range of 3 cells that contain the values "P90", "PHP",
"B60", I need my formula to sum the last two digits of only the values
starting with "P" and that have a number for the last two.

I haven't been able to get something like this to work, even for really
simple formulas like counting the number of cells whose right character is
numeric or summing the right characters of all cells in a range. Any
suggestions? Maybe i'm thinking of this from too much of a programming
perspective?

Thanks
Daniel

 

[T. Valko]

I need my formula to sum the last two digits

of only the values starting with "P" and that
have a number for the last two.

Ok

Will the entries to be summed *always* be 3 characters long starting with a
"P" follwed by a 2 digit number?

 

[Daniel]

Yes, I believe so. They will all be either letter followed by two digits or 3
letters.

 

[T. Valko]

Try this array formula**.

=SUM(IF(LEFT(A1:A10)="P",IF(ISNUMBER(-RIGHT(A1:A10)),--MID(A1:A10,2,2))))

** array formulas need to be entered using the key combination of
CTRL,SHIFT,ENTER (not just ENTER). Hold down both the CTRL key and the SHIFT
key then hit ENTER.

 

[Daniel]

ohhh I understand. I wasn't doing the ctrl+shft+enter thing before. that
works perfectly, thanks!

what are the hyphens in the formula for?

Thanks for the support!

Daniel

 

[T. Valko]

=SUM(IF(LEFT(A1:A10)="P",IF(ISNUMBER(-RIGHT(A1:A10)),--MID(A1:A10,2,2))))

what are the hyphens in the formula for?

We're using the RIGHT function to extract the last character in the cell to
see if it is a number:

ISNUMBER(-RIGHT(A1:A10))

The RIGHT function returns a TEXT value even if the value "looks" like a
number:

A1 = P22

RIGHT(A1) returns "2" as a TEXT value. Even though it looks like the number
2 Excel evaluates it as a TEXT string.

The hyphen, also called a unary minus, converts the TEXT character "2" to
the numeric value -2. We need to do this so that ISNUMBER will evaluate that
last character properly.

ISNUMBER("2") = FALSE
ISNUMBER(-2) = TRUE

The same thing is happening with the MID function. It also returns a TEXT
value even if it "looks" like a number. However, in this case we need the
positive numeric value because we're summing these values so we use a double
unary to convert the TEXT string to a numeric number.

The first unary converts the string to a negative:

A1 = P22

-MID(A1,2,2) = -22

The second converts the negative numeric value back to a positive numeric
number:

--MID(A1,2,2) = 22

In the case of the ISNUMBER(-RIGHT(A1:A10)), we're only testing for the
existence of a number, we're not concerned about the numbers sign so we can
save one keystroke (Wow, one whole keystroke!) by using just a single unary
minus.


exp101