Highlight more than once taken course in any given day

Question: My scenario is tracking employees who complete online training. I capture their name, id, class taken, and date. Any employee is free to take a plethora of different courses and they could take them all on the same day if they want. What I am trying to do is see if any employee has taken any course more than once in any given day?

Answer:

Conditional formatting formula:

=SUM(COUNTIF($A2, $A$2:$A$35)*COUNTIF($B2, $B$2:$B$35)*COUNTIF($C2, $C$2:$C$35))>1

Explaining Conditional formatting formula

Step 1 - Count record

The next COUNTIF function counts values based on a condition or criteria.

COUNTIF($A2, $A$2:$A$35)*COUNTIF($B2, $B$2:$B$35)*COUNTIF($C2, $C$2:$C$35)

becomes

{1; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 1; 0; 1; 1; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 1; 0; 1; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 1; 0; 0}*COUNTIF($B2, $B$2:$B$35)*COUNTIF($C2, $C$2:$C$35)

becomes

{1; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 1; 0; 1; 1; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 1; 0; 1; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 1; 0; 0}*{1; 0; 0; 1; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 1; 0; 0; 0; 1; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0}*COUNTIF($C2, $C$2:$C$35)

and returns

{1; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 1; 0; 1; 1; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 1; 0; 1; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 1; 0; 0}*{1; 0; 0; 1; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 1; 0; 0; 0; 1; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0}*{1; 0; 1; 0; 1; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 1; 1; 0; 1; 0; 0; 1; 0; 1; 0; 1; 1; 1; 0; 0; 0; 0; 1; 0; 0; 0; 0}

Step 2 - Multiply arrays

All three arrays must return 1 in order to indicate a row as duplicate, to accomplish this we need to use AND logic. AND logic is performed using the asterisk charcater between arrays, in other words, arrays are multiplied.

COUNTIF($A2, $A$2:$A$35)*COUNTIF($B2, $B$2:$B$35)*COUNTIF($C2, $C$2:$C$35)

becomes

and returns

{1; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0}.

Step 3 - Sum numbers in array

The SUM function adds numbers in a cell range or array and returns a total.

SUM(COUNTIF($A2, $A$2:$A$35)*COUNTIF($B2, $B$2:$B$35)*COUNTIF($C2, $C$2:$C$35))

becomes

SUM({1; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0})

and returns 1.

Step 4 - Check if record is a duplicate

If total is larger than 1 then we know it is a duplicate, the larger than character allows us to compare the total to a given condition, the returned value is a boolean value, TRUE or FALSE.

SUM(COUNTIF($A2, $A$2:$A$35)*COUNTIF($B2, $B$2:$B$35)*COUNTIF($C2, $C$2:$C$35))>1

becomes

1>1 and returns FALSE. Cell A2 is not highlighted.

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One Response to “Highlight more than once taken course in any given day”

Chuck Colby says:

February 1, 2022 at 1:26 am

Oscar so I modified your formula to look for duplicates and highlight a table of 4100 records to columns a, aa, ac as follows-
SUM(COUNTIF($A2, $A$2:$A$5000)*COUNTIF($AA2, $AA$2:$AA$5000)*COUNTIF($AC2, $AC$2:$AC$5000))>1
but didn't work ugh.. can you assist pls?

Reply

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