Combine cells of portions of a numbered list into a continous numbered list

**AusTempest** · 06-16-2014, 11:57 PM

Hey everyone,

I've googled the heck out of this for hours and hours, and tried to do my best to solve this.

I have multiple large lists of numbered paragraphs in excel that have the numbers to each sub paragraph in individual cells and i want to convert them into a full continious numbering scheme in each cell, as below:

21A.33 needs to look like
(a)----------21A.33 (a)
1------------21A.33 (a) 1
i. -----------21A.33 (a) 1 i.
2 -----------21A.33 (a) 2
(b) ---------21A.33 (b)
1 -----------21A.33 (b) 1

I've attached my spreadsheet with column b as the input (column a is just a sorting row incase i need to resort it) and columns D thru O are my attempt to combine them properly.

I manually did the first 56 rows and that took me an hour or so. I have ~900 rows in the spreadsheet and another 6 or 7 spreadsheets just like this, so manually entry really isn't an option.

Any help would be appreciated.

**[email protected]** · 06-17-2014, 01:09 AM

Please mentioned properly what you want do in this sheet. keep only ten entries and tell how you did manually and what is expected results for other entry.

Regards,
Suhas

**AusTempest** · 06-17-2014, 01:55 AM

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.

I tried to explain it as clearly as i can, but i'll try again for you.

I have a column of characters that MS Word calls an "outline numbered list", where each sentence keeps all of the previous "levels" of characters before the current number.

so for a three sentence list where all three are different levels subordinate to the previous it would be: "1" then "1 (a)" then "1 (a) i", where level 1 number style is "1, 2, 3", level 2 number style is "(a), (b), (c)" and level three number style is "i, ii, iii"

what i need is to transfer

1
(a)
i
(b)

to

1
1 (a)
1 (a) i
1 (b)

I currently have 900 rows of characters and need to add the previous set of characters if they are the level of indentation above the current row.

I have sucessfully been able to use formulas to detect what level of indentation each set of characters are (1 thru 5) as shown on the attached workbook in the full tab.

The Sheet1 tab shows 10 or so basic lines of the input and what the required output via formulas is.

Essentially, if something is level 3, ammend it to the end of the closest level 2 above it

I've tried to make a simplier sheet for you to look at here > combining numbering v2.xls