Posts by Jessica Lopez19

hiddennomad13 said:The only real headache is that it’s going to spit out a zero for any empty cells, so you’ve got to add a check to see how many characters are actually in the column:

=IF(COUNTA(A$1:A$1000)>ROWS(A$1:A1); ""; formula)

I think you meant for the full formula to look like this:
=IF(COUNTA(A$1:A$1000)>ROWS(A$1:A1000); ""; INDEX(A$1:A$1000;COUNTA(A1:A$1000)))
I gave it a shot myself and realized you probably had a typo or a little copy-paste slip-up—if someone were to try using this, they’d need to go up to A1000, not just A1.

Anyway, it does exactly what I needed it to do... thanks a million!

hiddennomad13 said:It’s basically just writing formulas... Here’s an automated way to do it...

=INDEX($A$1:$A$1000,COUNTA(A1:$A$1000))

I actually grabbed this formula and just stripped out the absolute references (the $) on the column. Once you do that, you can grab the first cell in column A, drag it across to the other columns, and then just use the fill handle to pull it down through all those other columns—and boom, you're done. Honestly, the INDEX function is pretty fascinating; I hadn't really played around with it before. I definitely know what COUNTA does, but INDEX is still a bit of a mystery to me. I'll have to keep scrolling down to see if anyone has figured out how to stop it from spitting out a zero when it hits an empty cell.

Thanks, this function is a total lifesaver!

Walter Jackson48 said:If you want to avoid making your formulas overly complicated, you can just turn off the zeros entirely. Just go into the Tools menu and uncheck "zero values." Of course, if your spreadsheet actually needs to display specific numerical data, then using an IF statement is probably your best bet.

Honestly, that didn't even cross my mind—I mean, we used to do that ages ago, but it hasn't occurred to me in forever. This definitely makes troubleshooting a lot easier. Thanks!

Edit:
Spoke too soon, though. I obviously can't use that trick when I actually need to show 0 hours in the sheet, so I guess I'm stuck with the IF check for empty cells after all. 🙂

Benjamin Wilson7 said:@Jessica Lopez19/">@@Jessica Lopez19

Alright, alright, my bad—I honestly thought you were just messing with me, but I see I was wrong.
Next time, though, maybe give us a bit more context so we actually know what's going on.

Ugh, sorry! I was trying to be quick about asking, and I didn't want to write a whole novel explaining why I needed this (or rather, bore everyone with the details), but I realize now that the way I phrased it sounded pretty ridiculous... What I'm actually struggling with is a school schedule that I've built in Excel, and the stupid software I use to print everything out doesn't have the option to flip the layout when the following week needs to be read "from the bottom up," and I really need to print both 🙂

Hey there!

Kyle Johnson2 said:Honestly, I don't see where the issue lies here.
Just run through an example based on your specific problem.

On Sheet2, set up the formula (using relative references) going backward
:
A1: =IF(Sheet1!AA1<>"";Sheet1!AA1;"")
B1: =IF(Sheet1!AW1<>"";Sheet1!AW1;"")
C1: =IF(Sheet1!AV1<>"";Sheet1!AV1;"")
D1: =IF(Sheet1!AU1<>"";Sheet1!AU1;"")
.....
Or, if you prefer the reverse logic
: =IF(Sheet1!AA1="";"";Sheet1!AA1)

Look, Excel just doesn't work that way; it won't "copy backwards" for you.
For that first row on Sheet2, you’re going to have to do it manually—cell by cell, formula by formula—slowly and carefully. In scenarios like this, where you're repeating the exact same action over and over, most mistakes happen simply because you slip into autopilot.
Once that's done, just select the first row and drag it down to row 70.

The second option is to go cell by cell using Copy => Paste Special => Paste Link from Sheet1 to Sheet2.
If you go that route, everything on Sheet2 will update whenever you change something on Sheet1, with one little catch: if a cell is empty on Sheet1, it’ll show up as a zero (0) on Sheet2.

That is exactly what I ended up doing last night; took me about 10 minutes tops. 👍

Ugh, I just realized why that specific workaround wasn't hitting the mark for me (honestly, how did I miss that initially?!)—I tried to hardcode the cell reference since it’s pulling from a different sheet, and I was just too lazy to manually type out "=Sheet1!$A1" (even though, let's be real, it leads to the exact same result)....

Let's clarify the whole situation: what I'm actually trying to achieve is to take a 50 x 70 table on one sheet and have it automatically generate a mirrored version on another sheet. The data should stay in the same rows, but the order within the cells needs to be completely reversed....

The real kicker here, John, is that if there happen to be any empty cells tucked in there, you end up getting a zero instead of a blank space, which is totally useless for my purposes. But looking back, I really shouldn't have dismissed that solution so quickly; it's an easy fix if you just wrap it in an IF function to check whether the cell is empty or not....

John, that’s actually a brilliant way to look at it—it honestly didn't occur to me 😂 to just rearrange that first row like that and then drag the whole thing down... sometimes you really do just need a Fresh perspective to see the obvious. Thanks a ton! I wish I could just highlight the first two cells in the top row with the fill handle and drag them across to finish the sequence, but unfortunately, Excel is being stubborn; instead of continuing the pattern inward from A1 B1, it keeps pushing outward toward A1 B1, though I have to admit, even that is way faster than what I was doing!!

I was actually hoping to stumble upon some specific copying trick that would pull the data inward, or maybe some kind of double transpose, but since that hasn't materialized, this will definitely work. Thanks again for the Fresh idea....

Benjamin Wilson7, that was just a quick little example to illustrate the point, obviously. We’re talking about dealing with a massive amount of cells here, where trying to rearrange everything by hand is basically a Sisyphus-level nightmare... imagine if you were staring down fifty rows with about seventy cells in every single one—is that more or less what you think I'm getting at?!?!?

So, I’ve got this situation in Excel where I have a single row with cells containing P I S M O—basically, every single letter is sitting in its own individual cell. What I'm trying to figure out is how to grab those letters and flip them around so they read backwards as O M S I P. I don't really care if the result stays in the same cells or moves to a neighboring row; I just need the sequence reversed. Any ideas on how to handle this via copying or some other trick?