Conditional Formatting Gem in #Excel: Highlight the N Closest Values to the Mean of a Range in a Filtered List by David Hager

 

I am extending the closest value technique I published recently to calculate the same based on a filtered list.

https://dhexcel1.wordpress.com/2017/07/04/using-conditional-formatting-in-excel-to-highlight-the-n-closest-values-to-the-mean-of-a-range-by-david-hager/

In this demonstration, the goal is to highlight values in a numeric range that are clostest to the average of that range in a filtered list. So, we first make the range dynamic with the following defined name formula.

NumRange =OFFSET(Sheet1!$A$1,1,,COUNTA(Sheet1!$A:$A)-1)

Then, we modify that range to include only filtered values.

fNumRange =IFERROR(IF(SUBTOTAL(3,OFFSET(NumRange,ROW(NumRange)-MIN(ROW(NumRange)),,1)),NumRange,””),””)

For more information on the SUBTOTAL function as used here, see:

https://dhexcel1.wordpress.com/2017/01/08/creating-a-unique-delimited-string-from-an-excel-filtered-list-by-using-the-textjoin-function-by-david-hager/

Next, we use that range to make an array of the absolute differences of each value of the range from the average.

ABS_Range =IFERROR(ABS(fNumRange-AVERAGE(fNumRange)),””)

We can then define a cell for the number of values to highlight.

N_Values =$B$2

The heavy work is done by the next formula, which creates an array of the N values to be higlighted.

Num_Array=INDEX(NumRange,N(IF(1,TRANSPOSE(MATCH(SMALL(ABS_Range,ROW(

INDIRECT(“1:”&N_Values))),ABS_Range,0)))))

This formula returns the position of each smallest deviation in the 2^nd argument of the INDEX function, which then returns the values corresponding to those deviations, based on a filtered list. The use of the formula syntax needed to do this with the INDEX function is explained at the following link.

https://excelxor.com/2014/09/05/index-returning-an-array-of-values/

This formula can now be used in the creation of the CF, where CF Formula is =SUM(N(A1=Num_Array)), starting at A1 and applied to all of Column A.

The result of this CF is shown below.

The example file can be downloaded here.

CF_Closest_Filtered