AboutTom Ogilvy Expertise Worked with the program for many years - provided assistance on MS Excel Newsgroups since 1997. Have received the Microsoft MVP award annually since 1999.
I don't answer questions on using Excel in a browser
Since I have no way to test this. Prefer not to answer charting questions. I consider myself to be particularly knowledgeable about using VBA internal to Excel but have no problems with formulas and pivot tables either.
Experience Have Used Excel for 15 - 20 years. Answered in excess of 70,000 Excel related questions in MS Excel newsgroups. Unless obvious, please specify whether you want a worksheet function or macro/VBA solution.
Education/Credentials BS General Engineering (concentration in Industrial Engineering)
MS Operations Research Systems Analysis
Question Is it possible for me to create a chart where Joe=Red, Bob=Green, Harry=Yellow, Rick=Purple – and I would type the person’s name in Column A and Column B would automatically populate with the respective color (or value)? I know there’s an IF…THEN command that does it, but the chart can get rather longer than that for that command.
Answer Johnny,
If you have
Joe Red
Bob Green
Harry Yellow
Rick Purple
in another sheet say in Sheet2 in the first two columns ( A:B), starting in A1
then in the subject sheet, in B2 you could have the formula
=if(A2="","",Vlookup(A2,Sheet2!A:B,2,False))
then drag fill this down column B.
Now when you make entries in column A, the vlookup will find the corresponding value and display it in the adjacent cell in column B.
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This topic answers questions related to Microsoft Excel spreadsheet (or workbook) stand-alone or Mircrosoft Office Excel including Excel 2003, Excel 2007, Office 2000, and Office XP. You can get Excel help on Excel formulas(or functions), Excell macros, charting in Excel, advanced features, and the general use of Excel. This does not provide a general Excel tutorial nor the basics of using a spreadsheet. It provides specific answers to using Microsoft Excel only. If you do not see your Excel question answered in this area then please ask an Excel question here
