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Utilizing Excel's turing capabilities to create Conway's 'Game of Life'
The Background It's been said with Lambda (and LET and a wealth of functions in 365) Excel has become 'turing-complete'. To quote the article linked below: "You can now, in principle, write any computation in the Excel formula language." https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/lambda-the-ultimatae-excel-worksheet-function/ The Challenge I thought it would be fun to create Conway's 'Game of Life' in Excel 365 to see how far I could push things. Conway's Game of Life - Wikipedia The rules are simple: A 'cell' has up to 8 adjacent cells (less if the cell is on the edge of the board). A 'neighbor' is a cell with a 1 while a 'dead' cell is empty. An 18x18 board Multiple iterations Bigger boards! more (it's relaxing to create new shapes and designs) The Approach My first thought was to use MAKEARRAY because I could use 'r' and 'c' coordinates and there would be no stacking. I devised a recursive function that worked for 1 iteration but failed on subsequent iterations because the use of TAKE/DROP was slowly shrinking the board! The revised approach is essentialy a recursive MAP that uses 3 arrays: the input matrix, the 'r' array (row numbers) and the 'c' array (column numbers). It's my way of using r/c without using MAKEARRAY. For Discussion I welcome any improvements to the existing function and any different approaches someone may have to creating Conway's Game of Life. Conway Lambda follows: Conway =LAMBDA(matrix, iterations, IF( iterations = 0, matrix, Conway( LET( height, ROWS(matrix), width, COLUMNS(matrix), r_arr, SEQUENCE(height) * SEQUENCE(, width, 1, 0), c_arr, SEQUENCE(height, , 1, 0) * SEQUENCE(, width), CheckNeighbors, LAMBDA(lattice, r, c, LET( RCx, LAMBDA(row, col, IFERROR(CHOOSECOLS(CHOOSEROWS(matrix, row), col), 0) ), N, RCx(r - 1, c), NE, RCx(r - 1, c + 1), E, RCx(r, c + 1), SE, RCx(r + 1, c + 1), S, RCx(r + 1, c), SW, RCx(r + 1, c - 1), W, RCx(r, c - 1), NW, RCx(r - 1, c - 1), compass, VSTACK(N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW), neighbors, SUM(compass), IF( AND(lattice = 0, neighbors = 3), 1, IF( AND(lattice = 1, OR(neighbors = 2, neighbors = 3)), 1, 0 ) ) ) ), MAP(matrix, r_arr, c_arr, CheckNeighbors) ), iterations - 1 ) ) )
How to know the original path of an inserted image ?
Hi all, I have a problem with an Excel file. In this file I used the feature "Insert image above cell" and I chose an image from a local path (on my hard drive). So far so good. However, if I copy the file to another computer, the image is gone. That's the concept. Now the problem is that this an auto-generated Excel file from an external program. I know where the images are but I generated multiple reports, modified some of the images and changed the images in some excel files to point to other folders. It works fine on the original computer but I copied the Excel files and the images (or so I thought) to the other computer and some images are missing. The question is : how do I know the original path of the image so that I can also copy it and re-link it. The additionnal question to that is : I modified the local image for some reason (didn't change the path) and I want to update the shown image to include my modification without closing and opening again the Excel file. Is that possible and how ? But the first question is really more important because basically I have a new laptop and I need to recover the whole file and images to export it if needed later in time when I won't have the old laptop anymore.
Need help with Excel formula
=IFERROR(INDEX(TBL_REG[Appointment Effective Date],MATCH(TBL_SF[@[License '#]],TBL_REG[License Number],0)),"!-No Match") Need some help with this formula. It works fine however, in the TBL_REG table there are multiple rows that have the same [License Number] so it will return the first [Appointment Effective Date] it finds when matching [License '#] from the TBL_SF to the [License Number] in the TBL_REG table.. I would also like to match on [State] from the TBL_SF table to the [Appointment State] from the TBL_REG table. Thanks, Shane
Counting within a date range across multiple sheets?
Hi Excel community, I am working on creating a section within my grant tracking that shows us application rate per year. Until now we have mostly cared about our disbursements, but a new board wants to also examine the success of advertising our grants to the community. I have written this formula that pulls the count from the main page: =COUNTIFS('Disbursements'!K:K,">=01/01/2023",'Disbursements'!K:K,"<=12/31/2023"). This count is accurate, and for the year 2024 reads 144. I also have a sub-tracker, that tracks these same grants given to individuals living within a specific area. When I add the same criteria to the formula and it then reads: =COUNTIFS('Disbursements'!K:K,">=01/01/2023",'Disbursements'!K:K,"<=12/31/2023",'CityA'!G:G,">=01/01/2023",'CityA'!G:G,"<=12/31/2023") the answer is no longer correct. It gives me the answer 2, when it should be 170 when I select by hand. Has anyone else run into this issue before? I know my formulas could also be a little more elegant, I'm fairly new to Excel, so if anyone has any advice there I'd really appreciate it!VBA Code for List Box Change
Hello, I'm having issue trying to setup an Excel worksheet, used as a form. Line 8 (J8, which I named the cell Question1) has a list box that is either "Please Select", "Yes", or "No". When there is a change I would like VBA code ran that deals with the selection made. If "Yes" then hide the next question, which is line 10. If the selection is "No" then just go to the next question. In the VBA editor I have top part of the below screenshot. It calls a macro, which is the second part of the below screenshot. When I choose Yes or No from the first question nothing happens besides the cell changing from Please Select to Yes or No (depending on what I change it to). What am I doing incorrectly? Thanks.
