Dear Kostis,
Thanks for your response. Before I start with my questions regarding the
equation you provided, does your solution display multiple results in one
cell? If so, in what form? Is it a drop-down list or do all the values
appear in a single cell? Now, onto all my questions€¦

Since Im not that familiar with this function or arrays, you might have to
walk me through this a little more. Is €œdata€� referring to the column where
I want the pay rates inserted (column G) or does it refer to the other file
where I have the pay rates stored (column O in the Rates.xls file)? For the
virtual array built with IF(conditions, ROW(data)), I dont understand what
€œIf€� conditions I would use. Is ROW(data) referring to the current row Im
in? For example, if I was looking up the pay rate in cell G8 on my test
sheet, would this part of the formula look like IF(conditions, ROW(G8))?

In the SMALL equation, what would I put in the ROW()-ROW(firstcell)+1)
section? Is ROW () referring to the row Im currently in and does
ROW(fistcell)+1 refer to column O in Rates.xls where the pay rates are kept?
Once again, I apologize for all these questions even though you did a nice
job explaining what the various functions do. Unfortunately, Im completely
new to working with arrays.

"vezerid" wrote:

Here is a general solution for retrieving multiple entries with
multiple criteria. Sorry, but I have no brains to adapt it to your
specific problem right now:

=INDEX(data,SMALL(IF(conditions,ROW(data)),ROW(dat a)-ROW(firstcell)
+1))

The idea: data is your data primary column.
A virtual array is built with IF(conditions, ROW(data)). This array
will have values like 1, 2, FALSE, 3, FALSE etc. where only admissible
records will contribute a number.
SMALL(virtual_array,ROW()-ROW(firstcell)+1)
This one finds the nth smallest index number from the virtual array.
firstcell is the first cell of the output array, hence the last
expression will generate numbers starting from 1 in the first cell of
the output and increasing.

This must be *array* entered (Shift+Ctrl+Enter)

HTH
Kostis Vezerides

On Mar 2, 2:13 am, RS wrote:
Problem: How can I display multiple results, based on multiple criteria
in one cell, kind of like a dependent drop-down list of results, without
sorting the source data located in a different file or using any filters. I
can't have multiple results spread out over more than 1 cell (because this
will result in many listings with blank cells, thus changing the format of my
sheet) nor do I want to have the results concatenated into 1 long cell.

Background: After combing through many postings in the Excel forums, I
adapted one of the formulas to allow me to find companies that match multiple
criteria on one of my worksheets and then insert the pay rate for these
companies in a separate column on that worksheet based on a pay rate table
located, currently, in a different workbook (a separate Excel file). While
trying to find a solution to this problem, I've created a smaller test
version of the spreadsheet. The formula I'm using is an array-entered
forumula:

=INDEX('[Rates.xls]Sheet1'!O$3:O$261,MATCH(1,('[Rates.xls]Sheet1'!$S$3:$S$261=$E8)*('[Rates.xls]Sheet1'!$K$3:$K$261=CONCATENATE($B8,"/",$C8,"/",$D8)),0))

where from the Rates.xls file, column O contains the pay rates to be found
and S contains the Company names to be matched against based on values in my
test sheet. From my test sheet, row 1 has headers in it. Column B is
"Type", column C "Program", column D "Model", column E "Company", and column
G is where I want the rates to appear. In the formula, columns, B, C, & D
are concatenated with /'s to match the values found in column K of the Rates
sheet (Example of column K: Networks/Res/Home; following the format
$B8/$C8/$D8).

Now I know that Debra Dalgleish has described how to create dependent
drop-down lists on her site, but in those cases, it requires either having a
sorted list or defining names for each list. Since I have almost 260
companies in the Rates file with other data listed in other columns, I would
rather not sort this list or try and define names for all these companies.

For the most part, the current formula works fine, but 14 of the
companies have more than 1 pay rate available. For these companies, the
formula only finds the first instance. Maybe the solution to this would to
have some sort of combination of this formula and vba or data validation that
would provide a list for these 14 companies. Maybe something that would say,
use the formula, but if any of these 14 companies with their multiple rates
are found, use a data-validated list or vba to display the results in a list.
Would this be possible? All help is greatly apprecitated.