Forum Discussion
How to fill data in another excel sheets based on value in first sheet?
I need to organize a contact list by type of contact. My first sheet is "All Contacts" and will show name, email, etc. as well as what category the contact belongs to in each column (i.e. donor, member). The contact category columns will be marked with "x" or left blank. Each contact category will have a corresponding sheet (i.e. donor, member). Conditional on the presence of "x" in each category column in the first "All Contacts" sheet, I need to auto fill the full contact row (name, email, etc.) in the corresponding category sheet (donor, member). Does anyone know how to do this? Thanks!!
2 Replies
If I understand you correctly, you have different columns for each category and you mark "x" in the applicable column for each contact. Try to use only one column "Contact type", in stead, and indicate the type of contact in that one column.
For example:
Contact: Contact Type:
Contact1 Donor
Contact2 Member
etc.
Then you can create your listings by contact by filtering on contact type.
To supplement whatRiny_van_Eekelen has proposed (with which I entirely agree)...the point is that you then would have all of your contacts on one single sheet, with the ability to filter then by category or type (or, for that matter, any other of the columns--e.g., should you ever be traveling to Iowa and wanting to know which of your contacts lived in Iowa, you could filter the entire list, all types, by state and find out easily).
As a general principle, to get at the underlying reasons for this "single sheet" recommendation: one of the biggest plagues when it comes to database maintenance is that of maintaining data integrity when data elements are duplicated across (in this case, distinct worksheets). Keeping the addresses of each person person all in one place and only in one place--especially when any one person could be a donor and a member and a volunteer....--this will help you keep things clean and orderly.
And if you noticed there, I just raised a point that might challenge what Riny_van_Eekelen suggested. IF your contacts , some of them (any of them) in fact fall into more than one category, then you would be wise to keep those separate columns with an "x" or "y" in the relevant ones. But the "single" database point remains the more important. I hope you see why.
Are there ways to do what you first asked? Yes. But we don't recommend it for the reasons given: you don't need to in the first place, and there are good reasons not to do it.
