Subtracting formula help

[TrishMc]

Hi everyone

Sorry I'm not up on the terminology of excel and the formulas.
I am making a spreadsheet that will track measurements for a gym trainer who wants to track their clients monthly measurements. I need the formula to show a total loss.
So I will enter a number for January, subtract Februarys measurement from January to get the total loss.
But now I'm lost. To show the total loss for March I need the formula to recognize that I now have to subtract March's Measurement from January. Februarys measurement is no longer valid.

Any idea how to do this?

[bhenlee]

Try this in C18 then copy across.

=IFERROR(C$5-LOOKUP(2,1/(C$5:C$16<>""),C$5:C$16),"")

[bhenlee]

Try this in C18 then copy across.


=IFERROR(C$5-LOOKUP(2,1/(C$5:C$16<>""),C$5:C$16),"")

[TrishMc]

Thank you #bhenlee ! That works perfectly!
I would love to understand how to figure these formulas out on my own. It looks so complicated when you don't understand the language.

[TrishMc]

I see you changed the formula to include IFERROR?
I tried that and it will add numbers to the total for an empty column.
The first formula does work: =D$5-LOOKUP(2,1/(D$5:D$16<>""),D$5:D$16)

[bhenlee]

I'll try to explain it but please bear with me.

The lookup function will look for the last cell with value in rows 5:16

The IFERROR function provides another option in case there are no data in the range