The combination of absolute and relative references allows me to type
the formula in C1 and fill down automatically. The reference to the
table of data A1:A6 will remain fixed whilst the reference to the lookup
value in B1:B2 will automatically update.

Cheers
Andy

Lon wrote:
Yes, excellent indeed. Thanks.

A follow-up question, if I may: Why do you use absolute locations ($A$1) in
your forumlas, rather than plain cell locations? The result, in this example
at least, is the same.

-Lon


"Andy Pope" wrote in message
...

[This is a reply I gave to a very similar question the other day.
Just replace Apple/Orange with Cat/Dog]

Hi,

Excel will not automatically summarize you textual values.
For example if your data, in A1:A6, was;

Apple
Orange
Orange
Orange
Apple
Apple

you would not get a 2 slice pie chart with each slice being 50%. You need
to summarize the data using formula or pivot table. The create the pie
chart on the summary data.

Here is an example of summarizing the example data.
B1: ="Apple" C1: =COUNTIF($A$1:$A$6,B1)
B2: ="Orange" C2: =COUNTIF($A$1:$A$6,B2)

The select B1:C2 in order to create your chart

Cheers
Andy

TheDevil wrote:

Hi all,

i've got this worksheet going. the data is a collection of stats from a
market research. its got name, company, address questions and answers.
some are simple answers like yes no, others are multiple choices.

so basically i want to draw up charts for this. but i figure i can only
do this with numerical data not textual data. is there a formula or way
around it?

i am absolutely clueless how to do it. so if it works out i want a pie
chart or bar chart that represents the
question and the percentages of how the answers were received. e.g. for
a sample question of what kind of pets do you have... i want a chart to
represent the one question "how many pets do you have" and the data in
the chart to reflect the answers collected... soooo... if 5 answered dog,
and 7 answered cats. i want the chart to
show this as if its drawn up a chart from numerical data to begin with.
see below for further detail...

--------------------------------

Question: what is your fav animal?
dog
cat
dog
dog
dog
cat
cat
monkey
elephant
..
.
.

i want the above data to be graphed into a nice pie or bar chart
representing the percentages shown proportionally... IS THIS EVEN
POSSIBLE???
---------------------------------------------------------

cheers.



--

Andy Pope, Microsoft MVP - Excel
http://www.andypope.info




--

Andy Pope, Microsoft MVP - Excel
http://www.andypope.info