Question

I am building a reporting worksheet to track social media data downloaded from Google Analytics.

I have a custom report in analytics that provides me with the date, medium and visits in three unique columns. I want to extract the number of visits, defined by medium and date, to a separate table where I have other data living.

Here is my source information:

Here is my destination:

I want to fill the number of visits from my Twitter data on the other sheet into my destination above while making sure the dates correspond.

Is this possible with Excel?

Answer 1

Very much so,

You can use Pivot Tables – which will pretty much take care of it for you via the instructions. Or if you want a formula based approach:

      A               B           C
1 Date            Medium      Visits
2 11/20/2012      Facebook    3
3 11/20/2012      Twitter     5
4 11/19/2012      Facebook    3
5 11/14/2012      Twitter     1
6 11/15/2012      Twitter     4

I like to use a function called SumProduct. It can be slow and bulky, but sometimes its easier than using a VB Macro.

To do this:

Total Facebook     xxxx

use:

=SumProduct((LookupArea = Condition)*(ColumnTotals))

How it works, is for each cell in your lookup area, it compares it to the condition. If the condition is true, it creates a (1). If it is false, it creates a (0). This is multipled against condition two. And condition two is telling it to take the “Visits” column and multipy it by an offset of 1 (so, 10 visits x 1 offset, is 10 visits).

Sample:

=SUMPRODUCT((B2:B6="Facebook")*(C2:C6))

This gives the result: 6

You can add even more conditions by adding a * and the next condition

=SUMPRODUCT((condition1)*(condition2)*(condition3))

You could also come up with a different totals by using +, -, /, etc. This allows you to negate values. And you can dual nest values and treat them separately.

=SUMPRODUCT(((condition1)*(condition2))-(condition3)*(condition4)))