I have spent most of today throwing data around in MS Excel.
One of the things that I have had to do is to convert percentages into real numbers.
In excel percentages are stored as fractions, for example 50% is stored as 0.5, 75% as 0.75 etc.
I am trying to chart these figures in Business Objects Xcelsius but the y-axis labels are just showing 0 to 0 hence why i need to convert my numbers.
I have just found a really easy way to do this.
- In the target cells, enter the value 100 in each cell.
- Copy the source cells
- Select “Paste Special” using the options “Values” and “Multiply”
This takes the source value 0.75 multiplies it by 100 and stores the result 75 !
I have used pase special - values often but I have never seen the need for the multiply option until now !
I have spent all day in MS Excel.
I receive excel spreadsheets in a “fairly” fixed format.
I need to get this data into Business Objects Xcelsius via another spreadsheet that stores historical records and keeps the data in a format optimised for display.
“Normally” I would be using Data integrator (DI) to move the data from the source, store the data in a database table or two, use query as a web service (QAAWS) or Live Office to pull the data from the database directly into Xcelsius.
Here we do not have access to any of these luxuries.
I have written a translation spreadsheet that I can point to a specific source and it will re-shape the data so that it can fit my target spreadsheet. Then it’s just a case of copy and then paste values….
To make this process easier I am using the “INDIRECT” function in excel.
=INDIRECT("[" & $H$1 & "]Data!” & AU$1 & $C17) * 100
Here the current cell will grab the vaue from the workbook named in H1, go to the “Data” spreadsheet then grab the row and column attributes from AU1 and C17 then multiply the number by 100.
This means that next month I just need to change the name of my source spreadsheet and it will all just work. If a row or column “moves” in the source, I just update the metadata (AU1 or C17) in this case.
It takes a long time to set up and to check but next month it should be a breeze.
Had a “strange” problem last week that really stumped me for longer than it should have.
My colleague had run a query to list some data and was getting approximately 200,000 rows back. We were investigating why a unique constraint was being violated so I took his query and did a count distinct to try and find the duplicates. I got 30,000 distinct values.
This really confused me, I was expecting only a handfull of duplicates, if any. Then I noticed that the first query already WAS a distinct list !
select distinct col1_id, col2_id from tablea
select count(distinct col1_id + ‘-’ + col2_id) from tablea
I concatenated the fields together so I am counting a single field, I included the separator so that I could differentiate 1-11 from 11-1.
See if you can spot what the problem is before you read on.
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I have had office 2007 on my laptop for ages now. Like everyone I am still using the “old” file formats until the rest of the world catches up. On the whole I have been impressed by the ribbon interface.
I have just found my first major annoyance. Freeze Panes. You now have three options: Freeze Panes, Freeze Top Row and Freeze First Column. Freeze Panes works exactly the same as it did in previous versions, no problem there. I can just continue to use that option.
The problem is with Freeze Top Row; this option freezes the top row that is shown on the screen not the top row of the sheet. I know that’s what it does, it’s just that, it’s not what I expect it to do, and I can’t stop myself from clicking it !
