define array in excel cell and use that cell in excel array formula

Question

I have an excel cell A1 having cell content {"Q15","R15","S15"}.

How can I use A1 cell in array formula in excel?

I have used this formula:

=SUM(COUNTIFS('sheet1'!$D$2:$D$838,"<>NA",'sheet1'!$E$2:$E$838,{"Q15","R15","S15"}))

the above formula works fine.

but when replaced with A1, it gives 0. And formula becomes

=SUM(COUNTIFS('sheet1'!$D$2:$D$838,"<>NA",'sheet1'!$E$2:$E$838,A1))

How can I use A1 so that the resulting formula contains the actual array?

Answer 1

The problem you have here is that Excel is reading {"Q15","R15","S15"} from A1 as a String ( ="{""Q15"",""R15"",""S15""}" ), not as an array.

You can get around this using MID and TRIM to artificially split the string via a SUMPRODUCT

=SUMPRODUCT(COUNTIFS('sheet1'!$D$2:$D$838, "<>NA", 'sheet1'!$E$2:$E$838, TRIM(MID(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(A1, """,""", REPT(" ", 99)), "{""", ""), """}", ""), 99*ROW(A1:INDEX(A:A, 1+LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1, ",", ""))))-98, 60))))

The "magic" bit here is the rather convoluted line below

TRIM(MID(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(A1,""",""",REPT(" ",99)),"{""",""),"""}",""),99*Row(A1:INDEX(A:A,1+Len(A1)-Len(SUBSTITUTE(A1,",","")))-98,60))

Turns {"Q15","R15","S15"} into Q15 , R15 and S15 , separated by 99 spaces. It then counts how many commas are in A1 , and (that many times) takes 60 characters (starting at position 1 the first time, then position 100 the second time, then position 199, et cetera) and trims the spaces - this gives an array {"Q15","R15","S15"}

So, as Tim Williams says in comments, you might be better off using VBA. A basic User Defined Function to split the array like this would work:

Public Function SplitArray(Text As String) As Variant
    'If we error, show #NA!
    SplitArray = CVErr(xlErrNA)
    On Error GoTo FunctionErred
    'Split the array
    If Left(Text, 1) = "{" And Right(Text, 1) = "}" Then
        SplitArray = Split(Replace(Mid(Text, 2, Len(Text) - 2), """", ""), ",")
    Else
        SplitArray = Text
    End If
FunctionErred:
End Function

Giving

=SUM(COUNTIFS('sheet1'!$D$2:$D$838,"<>NA",'sheet1'!$E$2:$E$838,SplitArray(A1)))