Generate a list of names that meet a date requirement.

Hello! I run a blog with many volunteer contributors in which I publish four articles daily that are written by them. I have a rule, a contributor can only publish every 2 weeks. Every day (as the blog grows and the number of contributors increases) it becomes more difficult to keep track of this condition.

My spreadsheet does the following:

Table 1: Names, Date and Day of Posts.

Table 2: Extract the names from Table 1 and count the number of posts for each.

Pivot table 3: Sort the names by the number of publications, so I can prioritize those with fewer articles.


Basically what I would like to do is generate a list of four random names of those with fewer articles and have these names meet the two week requirement. Is this possible?

Edit: My pivot table lost its format and some values changed, I attach the images to clarify any doubt.

Welcome to the forum.

There are instructions at the top of the page explaining how to attach your sample workbook.

Thank you! Sample workbook attached, post edited.

Attached is PowerQuery solution in which I have loaded the data, pivoted it and aggregated it as a count (see the table on the far right, which you can now use as the basis for your pivot table).

Thank you very much for responding! I don't think it solves the two-week requirement.

Basically what I would like to do is generate a list of four random names of those with fewer articles and have these names meet the two week requirement. Is this possible?

Sorry - what is the 2-week requirement?

If you can define it, then it can probably be incorporated into the query.

Originally Posted by AliGW

Sorry - what is the 2-week requirement?

If you can define it, then it can probably be incorporated into the query.

Hello again AliGW! Power Query solved my problem, thank you!