Using cell value as reference to sheet in formulas

Question

I have a spreadsheet with three sheets. Two are called 2012 and 2011 and have a bunch of similar data. The last sheet does comparisons between the data.

To be able to choose year, I'm using a cell (D1) where I can I can write either 2011 or 2012. The formulas then use the INDIRECT function to include this cell as part of the reference.

INDIRECT(CHAR(39)&$D$1&CHAR(39)&"!F:F")

This is not a pretty solution and makes the formula quite long and complex.

=IFERROR(SUM(FILTER( INDIRECT(CHAR(39)&$D$1&CHAR(39)&"!M:M") ;  (INDIRECT(CHAR(39)&$D$1&CHAR(39)&"!B:B")=$A4)+(INDIRECT(CHAR(39)&$D$1&CHAR(39)&"!B:B")=$A5)+(INDIRECT(CHAR(39)&$D$1&CHAR(39)&"!B:B")=$A6)+(INDIRECT(CHAR(39)&$D$1&CHAR(39)&"!B:B")=$A7)+(INDIRECT(CHAR(39)&$D$1&CHAR(39)&"!B:B")=$A8); MONTH(INDIRECT(CHAR(39)&$D$1&CHAR(39)&"!D:D"))=$B$1 ; INDIRECT(CHAR(39)&$D$1&CHAR(39)&"!F:F")=D$3));0)

Is there a better way of doing this?

I've tried to create a separate spreadsheet for the calculations sheet and importing (IMPORTRANGE) the data from the two sheets together on one sheet with VMERGE (custom function from the script gallery) but there is quite a lot of of data in these two sheets and the import takes a long time. Any changes (like changing year) also take a long time to recalculate.

Answer 1

Database functions tend to be cleaner when doing this kind of thing.

https://support.google.com/docs/bin/static.py?hl=en&topic=25273&page=table.cs&tab=1368827

Database functions take a while to learn, but they are powerful.

Or

You could put INDIRECT(CHAR(39)&$D$1&CHAR(39)&"!B:B") in a cell on its own.

Answer 2

I think that you have two years of information where the schema is identical (column C has the same type of information on both sheets). Also, I'm assuming that column B tracks the year.

If so, consider holding all of your information on one sheet and and use the spreadsheet function "QUERY" to create views.

For instance, this formula returns all the cells between A1:E from a sheet named "DataSheet" where the values in column B = 2010.

=QUERY(DataSheet!A1:E; "SELECT * WHERE B = 2010";1)

Sometimes there is a really good reason to have the data stored on two sheets. If so, use one of the vMerge functions in the script gallery to assemble a working sheet. Then create views and reports from the working sheet.

function VMerge() {
  var maxw=l=0;
  var minw=Number.MAX_VALUE;
  var al=arguments.length ;
  for( i=0 ; i<al ; i++){
    if( arguments[i].constructor == Array )l =arguments[i][0].length ;
    else if (arguments[i].length!=0) l = 1 ;  // literal values count as array with a width of one cell, empty cells are ignored!
    maxw=l>maxw?l:maxw;
    minw=l<minw?l:minw;
  }
  if( maxw==minw) { /* when largest width equals smallest width all are equal */
    var s = new Array();
    for( i=0 ; i<al ; i++){
      if( arguments[i].constructor == Array ) s = s.concat( arguments[i].slice() )
      else if (arguments[i].length!=0) s = s.concat( [[arguments[i]]] )  
    }
  if ( s.length == 0 ) return null ; else return s        //s     
  }
  else return "#N/A: All data ranges must be of equal width!"      
}

Hope this helps.