Hello! I have been researching this for a couple of weeks, reading every forum post I can get my hands on and even downloading users' proffered sheets. I'm as close as I can get and I'm now stuck. I have two formulas I can sort of work with:
I need to have a column of single letters (e.g., A, B, C, B, D, F, B, C, A) pared down to unique values (e.g., A, B, C, D, F). This has to be dynamic and all these work in the background on a separate, hidden sheet. I create new spreadsheets for every new order, so I cannot use the filters, please (not even an option). All of this works fine in Excel but not in OO.
1. =IF(ISNUMBER(ZZ2);OFFSET($A$1;ZZ2;0);"")
In the forum post from 2017 that has a list of "Eggs, Sausage, Bacon", etc., I downloaded the sheet from one of the posts. Please see attached JPG for what's going on.
For some reason, this formula stops working at a certain point, and if there are two of the same letters near each other (???). I can't explain it.
2. =IF(COUNTIF(A$3:A3;A3)=1;A3;"")
This formula works perfectly except that my column now has blank cells. I can use this formula, but is there a way to pare down the results further so "blank" cells (which aren't blank, they have the formula in them) can be removed? That would solve my problem instantly, I think.
3. I keep reading about databases. Should I just give up and learn to use a database? I don't even know if this will do what I want.
I'm at a loss. Thank you!