Question

I have a two dimensional table with countries and years in Excel. eg.

        1961        1962        1963        1964 USA      a           x            g           y France   u           e            h           a Germany  o           x            n           p 

I’d like to ‘flatten’ it, such that I have Country in the first col, Year in the second col, and then value in the third col. eg.

Country      Year       Value USA          1961       a USA          1962       x USA          1963       g USA          1964       y France       1961       u               ... 

The example I present here is only a 3×4 matrix, but the real dataset i have is significantly larger (roughly 50×40 or so).

Any suggestions how I can do this using Excel?

Answer 1

You can use the excel pivot table feature to reverse a pivot table (which is essentially what you have here):

Good instructions here:

http://spreadsheetpage.com/index.php/tip/creating_a_database_table_from_a_summary_table/

Which links to the following VBA code (put it in a module) if you don’t want to follow the instructions by hand:

Sub ReversePivotTable() '   Before running this, make sure you have a summary table with column headers. '   The output table will have three columns.     Dim SummaryTable As Range, OutputRange As Range     Dim OutRow As Long     Dim r As Long, c As Long      On Error Resume Next     Set SummaryTable = ActiveCell.CurrentRegion     If SummaryTable.Count = 1 Or SummaryTable.Rows.Count < 3 Then         MsgBox 'Select a cell within the summary table.', vbCritical         Exit Sub     End If     SummaryTable.Select     Set OutputRange = Application.InputBox(prompt:='Select a cell for the 3-column output', Type:=8) '   Convert the range     OutRow = 2     Application.ScreenUpdating = False     OutputRange.Range('A1:C3') = Array('Column1', 'Column2', 'Column3')     For r = 2 To SummaryTable.Rows.Count         For c = 2 To SummaryTable.Columns.Count             OutputRange.Cells(OutRow, 1) = SummaryTable.Cells(r, 1)             OutputRange.Cells(OutRow, 2) = SummaryTable.Cells(1, c)             OutputRange.Cells(OutRow, 3) = SummaryTable.Cells(r, c)             OutputRange.Cells(OutRow, 3).NumberFormat = SummaryTable.Cells(r, c).NumberFormat             OutRow = OutRow + 1         Next c     Next r End Sub 

-Adam