Managing shared Lists for lookups and validation in Excel can be problematic across workbooks. Google Docs gives us the opportunity to work from single shared lists, immediately available, and current. Here's how. See http://ramblings.mcpher.com/Home/excelquirks/listsandvalidation for more information

1. Cloud based lists and validation
Google Apps Script lists Excel Liberation

2. Sharing lists in the cloud
 Work from shared copies of a list
 Use familiar functions like vLookup, Index, Match to
access shared lists
 Apply lists to validate data entry
 Sort and filter lists
 Manipulate lists as data

3. carrier
aa
ba
ua
name
American
Airlines
British
Airways
United
Airlines
Here’s a 2 column list of
the type often used in
spreadsheets to validate
data input, or used as a
lookup
Using it in more than one Excel
workbook leads to
•list sprawl/divergence
•failures if a shared list is moved

4. Using scriptDB as list store
 Google spreadsheets,
in the cloud, should
solve these excel
sharing problems
 But Vlookup, Index,
Match and Validation
techniques are all
copied faithfully from
Excel
 So we’ll just replicate
the Excel fragility and
sprawl
 Unless..
 Sharing blisters from
ScriptDB
Lists..
..
Shared scriptDBs
Local scriptDBs
Lists..
..
Lists..
..
Spreadsheets
Lookups and
validation

5. Vocabulary
carrier
aa
ba
ua
name
American
Airlines
British
Airways
United
Airlines
listName: ‘airlines’
library: ‘blister’
Headers: 1,2 or
‘carrier’,’name’
 Lists are references as ‘library.listName’ – for example, ‘blister.airlines’
 Columns are referenced by number or name – (‘blister.airlines’,2) is the same as
(‘blister.airlines’,’name’)
 The library is the name of the scriptdb resource in which the list is stored

6. Simple functions
Finding, listing, sorting,properties

7. Finding
 Looking things up (vlookup)
=blisterLookup("blister.airlines","AA","carrier","name")
American Airlines
 Finding position of (match)
=blisterMatch("blister.airlines","UA","carrier")
200
 Get value at (index)
=blisterIndex("blister.airlines",120,"name")
Lan Peru

8. Listing
 The list headers
=blisterHeaders("blister.airlines")
carrier name link
 The list data
=blisterData("blister.airlines")
2F Frontier Flying Service
2J Air Burkina
2N Nextjet
3M Silver Airways
3X Japan Air Commuter
4Z Airlink
... etc
 List just one column
=blisterList("blister.airlines","name")
Frontier Flying Service
Air Burkina
Nextjet
Silver Airways
Japan Air Commuter
Airlink
... etc

9. Sorting
 list data sorted by name
=blisterData("blister.airlines","name")
JP Adria Airways
RE Aer Arann Express
EI Aer Lingus
SU Aeroflot Russian Airlines
AR Aerolineas Argentinas
AM Aeromexico
...etc..
 List just one column sorted by name
=blisterList("blister.airlines","name","name")
Adria Airways
Aer Arann Express
Aer Lingus
Aeroflot Russian Airlines
Aerolineas Argentinas
Aeromexico
...etc..

10. Properties
 Directory of blisters in a library
=blisterdirectory("blister")
currencies List of currencies and exchange rates by country and ISO
code
languageCodes list of language codes by country
champagne volume of champagne shipped
Billboardhot100 billboard top 100
airlines list of airlines and their flight codes
 Date that the list was last updated
=blisterUpdateDate("blister.airlines")
24/09/2013 17:33:43

11. Integration with other functions
Complex lists

12. Complex lists
 So far we’ve looked at simple lookup lists
 We can also use data as a blister lookup and to
validate other data against
Consider an inventory list for a car dealership, loaded as a blister, this
time to a scriptdb local to this spreadsheet

13. Simple functions on complex list
=blisterData("car_list") sorted by price in descending order
=blisterData("car_list","price",true)

14. complex list summarizations
The unique list of colors sorted by color
=blisterUnique("car_list","color","color")
The make and price of the 5 most expensive cars
=blisterList("car_list","make","price",true,5) and
=blisterList("car_list","price","price",true,5)

15. complex list summarizations
The position of the most expensive yellow car in the list
=blisterMatch("car_list","yellow","color","price",true)
The make of the 3rd cheapest car
=blisterIndex("car_list",3,"make","price")
The total price of all the cars on the lot
=sum(blisterList("car_list","price"))
The color of the cheapest bmw on the lot
=blisterLookup("car_list","bmw","make","color","price")

16. filtering
The total value of all red mercedes
=sum(blisterList("car_list","price",,,,"make","mercedes","color","red"))
The number of Audi A1
=count(blisterList("car_list","price",,,,"make","audi","model","a1"))
All data about all black Audis
=blisterData("car_list","make",,,"color","black","make","audi")
All red cars sorted by descending price and their prices
and makes
=blisterList("car_list","make","price",true,,"color","red")
=blisterList("car_list","price","price",true,,"color","red")
Makes we have in white
=blisterUnique("car_list","make",,,,"color","white")

17. validation
Applying lists as data entry validation

18. dataValidation
 You can apply data validation programmatically in
Google Apps Script
 Any blister can be applied to a range. Data entered
in that range will be validated against the data in the
list
 Validation can be dependent (dynamically applied
according to values already entered in other
columns), or non dependent – list values are applied
independently to each column

19. Non dependent validation
{ listName : 'blister.currencies' ,
blister: [ {listId: 'ISO', sortId: 'ISO' } ] ,
applies: [ {sheet:'enterCurrencies', range:'a2:a'} ] } ;
This definition applied on opening workbook

20. dependent validation
{ listName : 'car_list' , applies: [ {sheet:'enterCars', range:'a2:c'} ] };
This definition applied on opening workbook
On every cell change, the validation is re-evaluated
function onEdit(e) {
if(e.range.getDataValidations()) {
reApplyIfNeeded (e,generateValidations());
}
}

21. Summary
 Centralizing lists in shared scriptDB leverages the
availability of cloud based spreadsheets
 Blisters can be easily created from many sources –
on Excel Liberation website, you can see examples
of loads from XML feeds, spreadsheets, REST
queries, Fusion tables and other places
 API available for customized capabilities
 Using triggers, you can schedule blister updates in
the cloud – for example currency exchange rates
 All source is free and open under creative commons
license

22. More Information
 For more information, see Excel Liberation website
and Blog