I'm having trouble with a Match array function. They work when I separate them into their own match function, but not when I try to do an array. I'm trying to lookup two values in different columns and return the corresponding row number.

This is my function:

Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

Hi Keri,

Could you please help us to help you by providing an example workbook?

You know what your data looks like, how it should behave and what results you're after, but we have nothing more than your words above so are a little blind in the grand scheme of things, which makes things a little hard to fathom sometimes.

I uploaded two sheets. Let me know if you have any problems. They're dummy sheets, but you can see the layout of my data. On the Check Sheet, I want to reference the Data sheet and find the row where it says "Animal" (cell A3) and "James" (cell A4) and write the subtracted Numerator and Denominator amount in the "Number Here" cell. The data itself makes no sense, but hopefully you can get the gist of what I'm after. Thanks again!

Actual workbooks rather than jpegs are always a help, but we're getting somewhere now...

So what should the value in cell C4 be?

I presume you also need on in C5 and so on? What should they be.

"KeriM" wrote:
I'm having trouble with a Match array function. They work
when I separate them into their own match function, but not
when I try to do an array. I'm trying to lookup two values
in different columns and return the corresponding row number.
[....]
{MATCH(1,(('[OtherWB]Sheet1'!$B:$B=A3&"*")
* ('[OtherWB]Sheet1'!$C:$C="*"&RIGHT($A$4,3)&"*")),0)}

It might help if you posted what you believe __does__ work. Also include
some details about the contents of all the cells referenced.

It would also help if you explained what you mean "does not work". Do you
get an Excel error (which)? Does it return an incorrect number? [1]

I suspect this never does what you intend, even in part, if you are thinking
that the appended "*" will be interpreted as wildcard characters.

But if the character "*" is actually in B:B and C:C (!), one question is:
is OtherWB currently open in the same Excel instance?

Otherwise, I see no reason why the array-entered formula above (as indicated
by the curly braces)would fail as long there is a row in [OtherWB]Sheet1
that contains both literally "abc*" in column B and literally "*xyz*" in
column C, assuming that A3 contains "abc" and A4 contains "...xyz", where
"..." is one or more characters.

As an aside, it is "bad practice" to use ranges like B:B and C:C in this
context.

Arguably, it might not be so bad in Excel 2003 or earlier. But in Excel
2007 and later, they cause Excel to create 2 arrays of 1+ million entries,
to perform 1+ million arithmetic operations (multiply), and finally to
process 1+ million cells when no match is found.


------
[1] In addition to describing the problem better as suggested above, it
would be best if you uploaded an example Excel file (devoid of any private
data) that demonstrates the problem to a file-sharing website and posted the
"shared", "public" or "view-only" link (aka URL; http://...) in a response
here. The following is a list of some free file-sharing websites; or use
your own.

Box.Net: http://www.box.net/files
Windows Live Skydrive: http://skydrive.live.com
MediaFi http://www.mediafire.com
FileFactory: http://www.filefactory.com
FileSavr: http://www.filesavr.com
RapidSha http://www.rapidshare.com

The value in C4 should be 50. (70-20). I want to find the column in the data sheet that has "Animal" in column B and "James" in column C and subtract the values listed in E and F on that row.

Similarily, for C5, I want to find "Animal" and "John" in the data sheet which would result in the value of 20 (50-30) in cell C5.

The site said I couldn't directly upload an excel sheet. Is that not the case? I can't upload this on a file sharing site since I'm doing this on a work computer and all uploading sites are blocked.

They do work on their own (The range is from my actual data):

I can't get them to work together to provide me with where they match on the same row. If you look at my attached sheets (this is how it works on my real data, not sure about the dummy data), the first one would return animal in B2 and the second one will return james in C3. I need it to return both in row C3, since this is where my data is.

Since I have various characters before/after the strings I'm searching for, it wasn't picking my string up without the "*". Is there another way to provide a wildcard function?

I can't upload to a file sharing site since I'm at work and they are blocked and probably frowned upon.

I understand if this limitation prevents you all from helping me, it was worth a shot to ask.

"KeriM" wrote:
They do work on their own (The range is from my actual data):
[....]
=Match(A3&"*",'[Data]Sheet1'!$B$1:$B$65536,0)
=Match("*"&RIGHT($A$4,3)&"*",'[Data]Sheet1'!$C$1:$C$65536,0)

Try the following array-entered formula (press ctrl+shift+Enter instead of
just Enter):

=MATCH(1,(LEFT('[Data]Sheet1'!$B$1:$B$65536,LEN(A3))=A3)
*(SEARCH(RIGHT($A$4,3),'[Data]Sheet1'!$C$1:$C$65536)<0),0)

"*" works as a wildcard character only in the first parameter of MATCH, not
as part of an IF conditional expression.

(But do you really expect to have up to 65K rows of data?! Rhetorical
question.)


"KeriM" wrote:
If you look at my attached sheets
[....]
I can't upload to a file sharing site since I'm at work
and they are blocked and probably frowned upon.

For future reference....

I cannot see any "attached sheets" in my news reader.

If you can post to a newsgroup and add attachments to postings (which is
uploading, after all), there's a good chance that you can access one of the
listed file-sharing websites and upload a file.

Whatever you included as "attached sheets" (presumably an Excel file) could
be uploaded as a file to a file-sharing website.

You should be able to create a simple example Excel that demonstrates the
problem, but that has no private information. I suspect that is exactly
what you did for the included "attached sheets".

That gave me a #Value error as well...I was able to do what I needed to via VBA code, so I don't need to use a formula anymore. Thanks for your help though.