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Macman756

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 24, 2008
544
0
Atlanta, GA
So I am making various charts in Pages, and am tracking items in and items out. I have already used the Formula where I can have it add or subtract numerical values and print the result. I am hoping for it to keep track of duplicate strings. For example, lets say I have chart one, with Item1, Item2, Item3 and Item4, then I have chart two, it also has Item1 and Item2, but not 3 or 4. Is there a way for Pages to list the items from the first chart that hasn't been used twice in the second chart? So chart three would print Item3 and Item4. Is this possible? It would really help with quick inventory. Thanks!
 
I must confess from the brief description it is a little tricky to understand exactly what you are trying to do, but I don't think you can do this in Pages, as the calculation functionality is pretty limited, and I don't think you can link calculations from different chart tables.

You best bet is to create all your charts in a Numbers Spreadsheet and the copy and paste them into your pages document.

In Numbers you can use functions like COUNTIF to add the number of times a string appears in a defined range.

Combine this with the IF function and you could automate what items appear in a third table, which could then be linked to a third chart.

In the example below I have three ranges for three charts. The charts are not shown, but hopefully you will get the idea. The range for the first chart is A2:E5, the second is A8:E11.

I have used the CountIF formula to calculate the number of times each string appears in Chart 1 and Chart 2 the results are in cells B13:B16

If the CountIF value is 1, then it means the item only appears in one table and then can appear in the 3rd Table.

A series of calculations using an IF statement will then define this 3rd table in the range A19:R22, using the CountIF results.

However this is perhaps not the simple solution that you might have been looking for.

Numbers CountIF Example.png
 
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