Personal Accounts - Conditional Formatting - part 3

Hi People

Let's have a look at the spreadsheet pictures and show you some of the things we have been discussing.

This picture shows the result of an unexpected value in D7.  See the WHAT! in F7

Notice here that the next entry still causes an error in the 'Balance' column - column F

When the errors are corrected, the system goes on working

In this picture a Credit or 'C' transaction is made, and the value of the balance goes up.  Whilst it has been tested the spreadsheet does need much more testing before being happy with the results being seen.

A large withdrawal here has caused the spreadsheet to use its internal conditional formatting.  The  -£17.17 in the 'Balance' column is in red numbers

The last picture above shows that some colour conditional formatting is used in the Currency format for numbers.  We can further enhance the conditional formatting if we wish.

We could highlight the transaction amounts if they are credits or debits for instance

Conditional Formatting is found under the 'Format' menu options, about half way down.

For what we are going to do is fairly involved, so the details we will leave until next time

Thank You for stopping by

Prometheus1618

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Personal Accounts - Conditional Formatting part 2

Hi People

The formula I left you with last time was quite large wasn't it.  Let's have another look at it.

=IF(E7="";"";IF(OR(D7="C";D7="c");E7+F6;IF(OR(D7="D";D7="d");F6-E7;"WHAT!")))

This formula has been entered as a replacement for the original formula in cell F7 (this is the 'Balance' column)

To break it down, I will highlight the parts as we go through them

First of all we check to see if cell E7 has anything at all in it (that is, it is not empty - note that a 'space' entry is not an empty cell), as is highlighted below.  Why do we check E7?  If E7 is empty then there is no transaction.

=IF(E7="";"";IF(OR(D7="C";D7="c");E7+F6;IF(OR(D7="D";D7="d");F6-E7;"WHAT!")))

Next we check if the cell E7 has an Upper Case 'C' or lower case 'c' in it. If it has then we add the content of E7 to the balance from F6.  Again this is highlighted below.  You will notice the use of the OR function which checks the entries inside the bracket for an entry which is true, if one or more are then the 'E7+F6' part is 'executed' (which means 'used' or 'run' or 'done').  If no entry is true then the next part of the calculation is done (which means 'used' or 'run' or 'executed')

=IF(E7="";"";IF(OR(D7="C";D7="c");E7+F6;IF(OR(D7="D";D7="d");F6-E7;"WHAT!")))

Now if the testing has got this far then a further check is made on the contents of cell D7 for an Upper Case 'D' or lower case 'd' (using the OR function again).   The highlighted section is the part to check out.
If a 'D' or 'd' is found then the contents of E7 are subtracted from F6.  Note that if the formula was E7-F6 we would get a very different - extremely different answer so make sure that you always check subtractions and divisions CAREFULLY or you could end up with some pretty weird results.  This was the second item you should have noticed from the end of the last post.

=IF(E7="";"";IF(OR(D7="C";D7="c");E7+F6;IF(OR(D7="D";D7="d");F6-E7;"WHAT!")))

Finally we have a SHOUT 'WHAT!' if the value is anything other than

• an empty cell
• a 'c' or 'C' entry
• a 'd' or 'D' entry

=IF(E7="";"";IF(OR(D7="C";D7="c");E7+F6;IF(OR(D7="D";D7="d");F6-E7;"WHAT!")))

If you see this check the column D entry and note also this will affect every entry in the F column after the error so it does continue to SHOUT at you.

That's all this time people

Next time we will look at a little inbuilt conditional formatting for colour etc..

Thank You

Prometheus1618

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Personal Accounts - Conditional Formatting

Hi People

In the last entry, we discussed the options for detecting debits and credits on our simple Personal Accounts spreadsheet.
And having decided on the extra column to make the user think about what is to be done, we require some alteration for the calculations in column F (after the insertion of the new column D), from F7 (not F6!) down.

Currently the calculation in F7 looks like this

=IF(E7="";"";E7+F6)

[ Note  how the values have been changed.
Before the insertion of the new D column the calculation looked like this
=IF(D7="","",D7+E6) ]

First of all we need to test the letter in column D for the letters C,c,D,d.  Any other entry should produce a bold error message.

You will notice that we check for capital C and normal c (Upper Case = Capital, Lower Case = normal) and also for Upper Case D and Lower Case d.  This is because we do not know if the user works with Upper Case or Lower Case letters, so we cover both possible entries.

The error message should be immediately obvious so I suggest a word all in Upper Case letters. I have chosen the word WHAT! to make it stand out.  We shall make it stand out even more later, with conditional formatting

OK take a look at the formula below.  Yes I think a number of you will experiencing a sharp intake of breath, but when broken down into its parts it is really quite simple.

=IF(E7="";"";IF(OR(D7="C";D7="c");E7+F6;IF(OR(D7="D";D7="d");F6-E7;"WHAT!")))

I am going to leave you with this formula to have a look at for next time and then we will break it down to show you what it means.  You will notice two things specifically (if your very sharp), one of which is not so obvious, but its effect would be alarming for the user.

Until next time, Thank You

Prometheus1618






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