Add an "ISIN" function to Excel

This is a user-to-user forum, and not really a window to Microsoft developers.

But, if I understand your request, would it not be trivial to mimic in Excel using VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP, COUNTIF or MATCH for single vector ranges, and a UDF for multi-dimensional ranges?

I have a workbook with financial statement information for each company included in the S&P 500, so there are numbers like net income and total assets for 500 companies. To do a linear regression analysis, I need those numbers for the last 36 quarters. I have the workbook designed to automatically download each company's numbers for the last 4 quarters from the internet. As time goes by, I have to enter new numbers as companies release their quarterly financial statements.

I designed the sheet so there's empty spaces to enter the next 10 years' numbers. As new numbers get entered, it automatically shifts the calculations to be the last 36 quarters.

An ISIN function would help to identify when a company has released new numbers that I need to update. When I Data, Refresh, to download the most recent 4 quarters from the internet, manually checking which of those numbers are new to know which ones I have to update is tedious when I have to do it for 500 companies every 3 months. For each number downloaded, it would save time to have a cell that identifies if that number is not contained in the numbers previously entered so I know I have to update that number.

Hi Rob,

As Ron has pointed out, this is a user-to-user forum.

Try addressing your suggestion to:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/suggestions.aspx

===

Regards,

Norman

I suppose someone with a MS contact might see your post, forward it to the development group, and it wind up being incorporated in a future release, but I have not seen that occur.  Perhaps someone else seeing this thread will provide a better contact.

A thought:  You write that you would like a function that tests for the presence of one item in a group of items and that returns TRUE or FALSE as a results.  Since this should be easily mimicked, in the format you described, by:

     =ISNA(VLOOKUP(lookup_value,table_array,[range_lookup]))  

         or

     =COUNTIF(range, item) = 0

perhaps there is another way of eliminating the dozens of IF functions in one formula you require due to the lack of an ISIN function.  Perhaps if you post the details of your issue here, someone may be able to suggest a different approach, that you could use now.  Perhaps that is why the MS employee referred you to this forum.

I know all those functions, but I have occasions when none of them would work the way I need them to and my best option is using dozens of IF functions in one formula.

A Microsoft service employee gave me a link to this site to make recommendations to Microsoft. There a better place to do it?