Using list values as variable in secondary formulae... best way?

R

rtilghman

Been struggling with this for a few hours and not making much
progress, hoping someone can help me out.

I've got an analysis XLS that has a bunch of interviews and a bunch of
analysis pages that look at aggregate responses for the questions
across all the scripts. What I'm trying to do is build a section in
each of the question analysis pages that will allow the user to select
one of the other questions from a drop-down menu/list and then see the
intersection between the current page's question and the selected
question.

For example, say the user is on the sheet for "Question 36" and wants
to see how people who answered this question answered Question 43. I
want to allow them to pick Question 43 in the pull-down and then have
that selection cause both the vertical key (labels) and data points to
change commensurately.

The easiest way to do this (in my mind) is to tie each list entry to
the question number and appropriate row, and then to reference them
centrally from teh analysis fields. That way when the user changes it
and updates, the calculations should all refer to the new variable.

What I can't figure out is how to do this in Excel... I basically need
a list with a label and two hidden values, and I then need a way to
reference those values from the various dependant cells.

Thoughts? Is there a good way to do this? Also, how do you create
lists that can be shared between sheets? Having trouble just figuring
that out...

Thanks for any help.

-rt
 
R

rtilghman

Took a snapshot of the component I'm talking about and building in the
hopes it helps to illustrate what I'm trying to do. Click the link
below to see the gif.

http://www.tilghman.net/ConvergenceTool.gif

Basically I want to give the user the ability to select from a defined
list ("Data Point Name" with the arrow), and then have the labels
along the top and the data values change appropriately. I can do this
by just providing the right variable, I just have to figure out how to
provide that variable when a value in the pull-down is selected.

Thanks,
Rick
 

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