Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007 and 2010. If you are using an earlier version (Excel 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Excel, click here: Compiling a List of Students in a Course.

Compiling a List of Students in a Course

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated August 14, 2019)
This tip applies to Excel 2007 and 2010


6

Keval has a table of over 5,000 students distributed across 22 courses of study. Against each student's name in each row of this table is indicated the course in which the student is registered. Keval would like, on a different worksheet, to put a course name in cell A1 and then have Excel display, beginning in row 3, all the students in that course, as pulled from the list. He wonders if there is a way to do this with a formula.

The best solution to this problem is going to be dependent, in large part, on how your source data is organized. If you only have two columns (student name and course name), then it is possible that you don't even need to use a second worksheet. Instead, you can get by using Excel's filtering capabilities. Just filter on the contents of the column that contains the course name, and you can easily limit what is displayed to only those students in the course.

If you must have the information appear on the second worksheet, it may be best to use an array formula to extract the students. Put the desired course in cell A1 and then the following formula in cell A3:

=IF(COUNTIF(Sheet1!$B$1:$B$5000,$A$1)<ROW()-2,"",
INDEX(Sheet1!$A$1:$A$5000,SMALL(IF(Sheet1!$B$1:$B$5000=$A$1,
ROW(Sheet1!$B$1:$B$5000)),ROW()-2)))

Remember—this is a single formula and you need to enter it in the cell by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Enter. Copy the formula downward into enough cells that it should accommodate your largest class. The formula also assumes that the source data in in rows 1 through 5000; if this is not the case, you'll want to modify the formula to reflect the appropriate range.

Another approach is to create a PivotTable based upon the student/course list. All you need to do is make sure that both the course name and the student name fields are in the "row" area of the PivotTable. Put the course name field first and the student name field second, and you'll end up with a list of all courses with the students under each course name.

If your source data has additional information associated with it (such as grades, addresses, book assignments, etc.), then you may want to consider working with an actual database program, such as Access. You'll be able to manipulate and extract data using tools that are superior to those in Excel.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (12347) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007 and 2010. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Compiling a List of Students in a Course.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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Comments

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What is 6 - 0?

2016-04-19 08:14:16

Adamu Ramatu

perfect I love this. I can learn more from your tip


2014-09-26 08:55:43

nigel irwin

If you use a pivot table with course name as row label and count the student names, then if you double click on the total for each course that will list all the students for that course on a separate worksheet


2012-12-11 15:22:22

Mohammad Al-Khalidy

Dear Juan,

As I understood, the purpose of the condition:
IF(COUNTIF(Sheet1!$B$1:$B$5000,$A$1)<ROW()-2,"",.....)
is to make sure the result list matches the # of students for a specified course.
For ex: if the # of students for Course C1 is 7, the countif should not be more than 7, else the formula should display "".

For the SMALL function:
The IF condition, IF(Sheet1!$B$1:$B$5000=$A$1, ROW(Sheet1!$B$1:$B$5000) in the INDEX function, which should indicate the row number, gives many values in the array formula (7 in the above example), for ex: 4,7,9,11,13,14,16 which are row numbers. We need to choose one value based on the current row we are in. The SMALL function SMALL(array, k), gives us the kth smaller value among a range, which in this case the Row()-2, "SMALL(IF(Sheet1!$B$1:$B$5000=$A$1,
ROW(Sheet1!$B$1:$B$5000)),ROW()-2))"

I am not sure it is clear enough, but hope it helps

Regards,
Mohammad Al-Khalidy
LEBANON


2012-12-09 10:21:13

Juan

Is it possible to explain why you use the SMALL formula?


2012-12-09 10:09:10

Juan

What does this formula mean?
COUNTIF(Sheet1!$B$1:$B$5000,$A$1)<ROW()-2


2012-12-08 05:43:27

Michael Avidan - MVP

1) The picture, in the following link, is the solution as I see it to Keval Aroras original question who stated:
"I have a table of over 5,000 students distributed across 22 courses of study".

2) Excel 2007/10/13 have a new function: IFERROR which eliminates the need of the long test:
IF(COUNTIF(Sheet1!$B$1:$B$5000,$A$1)<ROW()-2

http://ipic.se/img/1354962018.png

Michael Avidan
“Microsoft®” MVP – Excel
ISRAEL


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