Let me tell you what it is I am doing. Maybe I am going about it all in the
wrong way.

I am writing a take-off program (spreadsheet) to calculate the materials,
labor and subs needed to build a house. I am up to the point of framing
materials and working on floor joists. The problem is that there are a near
infinite number of possible joist sizes (2X6, 2X8, 2X10, etc.), spans, and
centers in any given floor. Therefore, I created a matrix of the
possibilities I expect to encounter. The matrix is filled in based on the
input data (span, joist size, and center). I now need to reduce the matrix
to only the josts size, including the correct length (2X8-10', 2X10-12',
etc.), quantities, and price.

Many years ago, I wrote all this in Basica (on my Tandy!) and it works
great. However, Basica won't run on modern computers and I don't have time
to update my programming skills. In code, this all so much simpler. In a
spreadsheet, I have to work within single cells with single formulae.

"cminor" wrote:

I am trying to create a list of data based on nonblank or nonzero cells in
another list. More specific: I have a group of cells, 30 Rows by 8 Columns,
which contain data (numeric) that represent quantities of 30 items from 8
categories. Each category is then totalled in the 9th column. In columns 10
and 11, I have the item name and price. Elsewhere in the worksheet, I need
to list all items that have a total quantity greater than zero along with the
item name and price. I expect this to be 6 or 8 items out of the 30.

What I am trying to avoid is listing all 30 items and having some with zero
quantities. Where the nonzero items will eventually be listed is a page to
be printed and I don't need to waste paper.