Is it possible on Excel to find which combination of numbers from a list add up to specified sum?

Question

i.e. if you have one total and a whole list of numbers, can you use maybe goal seeker or solver to return to you, cominations of numbers which will equal your total from the list?

Answer 1

You can use brute calculating strength of excel to do the job. Here is the pseudo code
for x = 1 to selection.cells.count
for y = 2 to selection.cells.count
for z = 3 to selection.cells.count
if selection.cells(x) + selection.cells(y) +selection.cells(z) = numberyouwant
debug.print selection.cells(x) &", " & selection.cells(y) &", " & selection.cells(z)
endif
next
next
next

Answer 2

1

Answer 3

Sorry at the moment I can't see how but I have added this q to my watch list an if enlightenment comes I will get back to you, I had a quick look at goal seeker but I can't see how you would make this work, If you could use an enormous if command I could see it working just, how long is the list of numbers that you want to search from?

Answer 4

a raw text file uses a byte per character (number or space in your case) 8 million * 6 numbers plus spaces (some numbers are two digits) gives at least 100 million characters. which is approx 100mb file size. now if you put that in excel, it will save room for formatting and other settings, so it could be a huge file size. this will be a waste of time

Answer 5

The total in Excel done 2 ways
+A1+B1+C1
+sum(A1..E1)

If you select the cell and click "View"/"Formula bar" you will be able to view the actual formula. First option don't need any explanation. Second node says Cells ranging form A1 to E1 i.e. A1 + B1 + C1 +D1 +E1. Only thing to watch is when you say A1..E5 this means a square block of cells(kind of metrics) is used.

Answer 6

Click on the total cell and then just look at the formula bar. It will give you the information you are looking for.

Answer 7

yes. in the box you want the3 total to appear write for example =a1+a2+a3 or somesuch and the system will add automatically