Extracting Ingredients from an #Excel List by Cost Category by David Hager

Disclaimer: This technique uses the TEXTJOIN function. You need the Excel version included in Office 365 for the TEXTJOIN formula to work.

There are quite a few examples of a material based on ingredients. These include recipes, blends, paint mixtures, etc. Presented here is a method of extractiong from a list the ingredients for each mixture based on whether they have a low, medium or high cost.

The main list has 3 columns: Mixture, Ingredient and Cost. The lookup table has a list of ingredients based on cost category, as shown in the figure.

 

The main formula from cell G2 is

=TEXTJOIN(“, “,TRUE,IF(((Mixture=$F2)+(Cost=G$1))=2,Ingredient,””))

This formula is filled to complete the lookup table.

If the mixture and the cost are correct for the formula based on its position in the table, it will return the corresponding ingredient into an array. The other array elements are left blank. Then, the TEXTJOIN function concatenates the elements of the array, excluding blanks.

I hpe that you find this useful!

You can download the file here.

IngredientListByCost