How to swap rows and columns?
 

I had a heart attack last year, and my doctor told me to keep a
journal of diet, exercise, etc. I'm using an Excel worksheet to do
it. Each column is a day of the year, and the rows are items, like
how far I walked that day, how much I ate, how much sleep, my weight,
my blood pressure, etc. As I got in the habit of using it, I started
adding other stuff, so now it's become an important repository of data
for me.

The problem is, I thought Excel had essentially unlimited rows and
columns, and it turns out that it only has 256 columns, which isn't
enough for a year. It has thousands of rows, and I have way less than
200 categories of activities I record, so if I could just switch the
rows and columns around, I would be OK.

So I have two questions:

1) Is there any way to swap the rows and columns around, without
losing the data? In other words, can I change it so that the rows are
the dates, and the columns are the activities?

2) Is there a relatively cheap and easy to learn program that would be
better than Excel for what I'm doing (daily journal)?

Thanks for any help.

Actually, I cannot think of a better/easier program to use for your purpose.
Way to go. :)
Now select ALL your data, and hit Ctrl+C to copy it.
Go to a new worksheet and hit Edit--Paste special--Transpose.
That's it!
Stay healthy!
************
Anne Troy
www.OfficeArticles.com

wrote in message
...
I had a heart attack last year, and my doctor told me to keep a
journal of diet, exercise, etc. I'm using an Excel worksheet to do
it. Each column is a day of the year, and the rows are items, like
how far I walked that day, how much I ate, how much sleep, my weight,
my blood pressure, etc. As I got in the habit of using it, I started
adding other stuff, so now it's become an important repository of data
for me.

The problem is, I thought Excel had essentially unlimited rows and
columns, and it turns out that it only has 256 columns, which isn't
enough for a year. It has thousands of rows, and I have way less than
200 categories of activities I record, so if I could just switch the
rows and columns around, I would be OK.

So I have two questions:

1) Is there any way to swap the rows and columns around, without
losing the data? In other words, can I change it so that the rows are
the dates, and the columns are the activities?

2) Is there a relatively cheap and easy to learn program that would be
better than Excel for what I'm doing (daily journal)?

Thanks for any help.

Answer to q1: yes. Step 1 is to make a backup copy of your data so you
don't accidentally lose anything, and learn the procedure that follows
on your backup copy.

All you need to do is highlight your data, then click Edit Copy.
Move to a new space in the worksheet, or a new tab; click Edit Paste
Special and select the Transpose box. Rows become columns and vice
versa.

I don't know about q2- if Excel is working for you, and particularly if
you're tracking differences in sleep / weight / BP over time, you may
want to stay with Excel since it does math, graphs, etc.

Hi

Save a copy of your existing data - just in case!
Mark the range of your data.
Copy it all.
Choose another sheet.
Paste SpecialTranspose

With regards to another program, I can;t help. What you are doing in Excel
sounds fine.

Regards

Roger Govier


wrote:
I had a heart attack last year, and my doctor told me to keep a
journal of diet, exercise, etc. I'm using an Excel worksheet to do
it. Each column is a day of the year, and the rows are items, like
how far I walked that day, how much I ate, how much sleep, my weight,
my blood pressure, etc. As I got in the habit of using it, I started
adding other stuff, so now it's become an important repository of data
for me.

The problem is, I thought Excel had essentially unlimited rows and
columns, and it turns out that it only has 256 columns, which isn't
enough for a year. It has thousands of rows, and I have way less than
200 categories of activities I record, so if I could just switch the
rows and columns around, I would be OK.

So I have two questions:

1) Is there any way to swap the rows and columns around, without
losing the data? In other words, can I change it so that the rows are
the dates, and the columns are the activities?

2) Is there a relatively cheap and easy to learn program that would be
better than Excel for what I'm doing (daily journal)?

Thanks for any help.

And just some thoughts...

Be as granular as you can.

Use separate columns for the systolic and one column for the diastolic
measurements. (It'll be easier to do math that way.)

If you take your measurements a couple of times per day, use a different pair
for each instance.

If you keep track of the time you eat, use multiple columns--time and items (you
can use alt-enter to force new lines within a cell for the thanksgiving feast!)

You may want to apply data|Filter|autofilter to see different rows (filter by
day to see how you're doing on weekends??)

And you may want to use format|conditional formatting to highlight those out of
ordinary numbers.

Save often and make backups!

(I find a food diary (pen and notebook) easier to use for the diet stuff.)



wrote:

I had a heart attack last year, and my doctor told me to keep a
journal of diet, exercise, etc. I'm using an Excel worksheet to do
it. Each column is a day of the year, and the rows are items, like
how far I walked that day, how much I ate, how much sleep, my weight,
my blood pressure, etc. As I got in the habit of using it, I started
adding other stuff, so now it's become an important repository of data
for me.

The problem is, I thought Excel had essentially unlimited rows and
columns, and it turns out that it only has 256 columns, which isn't
enough for a year. It has thousands of rows, and I have way less than
200 categories of activities I record, so if I could just switch the
rows and columns around, I would be OK.

So I have two questions:

1) Is there any way to swap the rows and columns around, without
losing the data? In other words, can I change it so that the rows are
the dates, and the columns are the activities?

2) Is there a relatively cheap and easy to learn program that would be
better than Excel for what I'm doing (daily journal)?

Thanks for any help.

--

Dave Peterson

The copy with transpose worked perfectly. Thank you all for the help,
and for the good wishes.