Misaligned Reports

J

jcliquidtension

Hi,

One of my clients sends me sales reports that are generated by a custom
program, and create excel spreadsheets. I have two questions about these
reports:

1. There are a number of columns (a. Store, b. Qty Delivered, c. Qty Sold,
d. Sell-through%, etc. Under each column, there are product quantity numbers
for each store. However, the numbers do not line up in a column. For
example, even though the heading for "Qty Delivered" may be in column e, the
numbers are misaligned into columns c, d, e, f, etc. Additionally, the
misalignment is very random. There may be a chunk of 40 rows that are off
one column to the right, and then one column that is two off to the left, and
then one that is correct, and so on. It's not usually more than 3 columns
off, but either way, it makes it almost impossible (as far as I know) to run
vlookup formulas in my own spreadsheets that I use to interpret and further
manipulate these report numbers. Is there a code I can write to clean these
up so that the columns are lined up perfectly?

2. The numbers that show up in these reports do not calculate for some
functions. For example, once I have cleaned up the columns, and run my
vlookup formulas to pull the info into my own templates, I have to hit F2 for
each number in order for the "sum" function to calculate the column. Is
there any easier way to do this rather than hitting F2 enter F2 enter F2
enter F2 enter F2 enter etc. all the way down the column?

Thanks in advance,
Jason
 
B

Bill Ridgeway

It could be that cells are formatted differently as 'general', 'number' or
'text'. A quick fix is to highlight a correctly formatted cell and Copy and
Paste Special / Formats to all the other cells. However, you may find that
further use of the spreadsheet may, again be in incorrectly formatted cells.
The longer way to resolve this is to confirm the required format for a
column or row and reformat the whole column or row.

I have found instances where, although cells are formatted identically,
digits stray ever so slightly. I've not been able to find the cause but my
quick fix fixes it.

Regards.

Bill Ridgeway
Computer Solutions
 
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