Apple Numbers Question

So I have been trying to search ALL over the internet, reddit, and others to see if this is something I can accomplish in Apple Numbers. I was spitballing with ChatGPT in order to see if there was something I was missing, but any solutions in offered that totally seemed like the thing to used didn't work (LOOKUP, VLOOKUP, even INDEX/MATCH) I had ChatGPT explain what it is that I am trying to do so that any folks looking to help don't need to sort through my ramblings.

"You want to automatically update the "Level" column in your main sheet based on the "Total XP" values. The levels should be determined by a reference table that maps XP values to levels. When a "Total XP" value falls within a certain range specified in the reference table, the corresponding "Level" should be updated to reflect that range.

Key Components:

  1. Main Sheet: Contains categories, Total XP values, and a Level column that needs to be updated based on Total XP.
  2. Reference Table: Contains XP thresholds and their corresponding Levels. This table defines what XP range corresponds to which Level.

Desired Outcome:

When the Total XP value in the main sheet changes, the Level column should automatically reflect the correct Level according to the XP thresholds defined in the reference table.

Example:

  • If the Total XP for "Cooking" is 20, and the reference table defines that 0-82 XP corresponds to Level 1, the Level for "Cooking" should be 1.
  • If the Total XP for "Financial" is 94, and the reference table defines that 83-173 XP corresponds to Level 2, the Level for "Financial" should be 2.

Your goal is to use a formula or function in Apple Numbers to dynamically update the Level column based on the Total XP values and the reference table." -ChatGPT

Mahalo for any help offered!

MacBook Pro 14″, macOS 14.5

Posted on Jul 15, 2024 4:20 PM

Reply
4 replies

Jul 16, 2024 6:20 AM in response to DevlinC

Your formula looks perfectly correct yet your answer for Cooking is wrong. I cannot tell if the answer for Financial is wrong as well.


You are not showing the table name of your Levels/XP table in your first screenshot. I am assuming it is named Levels and it is the table your formula is referencing.


One thing you should do is make the first row of your Levels table a header row. Not that this is the problem but it should be done anyway.


Some of the "numbers" in Levels::B might be text. The 83 in particular. Numbers that are formatted as text are not actually numbers. The math operators +-*/ work on them but functions treat them as text just as if they were "abc". If you are looking for the number 83, LOOKUP will skip right over a text-formatted 83. Try formatting column Levels::B as "automatic" and see if that clears anything up. The typical way to tell number vs text is that text by default aligns to the left of the cell while numbers align to the right. But if the user manually sets the justification, that visual clue goes away. Take a look at the cell with 83 in it. As "automatic" it should have settings for the number of decimals and couple of other things.


Jul 15, 2024 8:51 PM in response to Badunit

Thank you so much for your reply! Yeah I do find ChatGPT at least helps with getting my point across when I ramble my problem into it, but not much use solving problems especially if it's not specifically trained on this stuff. I am still running into a problem with this and tried fiddling with it, but I am not as familiar with Numbers as I'd like to be, and certainly not to this extent.


Please let me know if there is any information I should be providing to assist. Thank you so much again!

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Apple Numbers Question

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