“This is how we process ARRAYFORMULA. It’s a difficult opponent, but it’s much easier for us than dealing with thousands of lines of functions.”
“That’s right, but honestly, it was dangerous for me. It would have been bad if we couldn’t defeat even a few of them. Um, did Saito-san’s athleticism come before you became a worker? Or did you undergo special training?”
What Saito said was reasonable, but it was based on his incredible fighting skills, which made it hard to believe he was just an old man. After all, his old job at a ‘construction company’ was probably a front and I thought he was probably a yakuza hitman who was also an Excel craftsman in the management department.
“No, I didn’t lead a life where I exercised much and I didn’t really put much effort into it after. Well, this job is simple, so you just get used to it.”
I thought that there was no way that was really true and that he was really part of the yakuza, so I vowed to stop asking any more questions about Saito’s past. I decided that when I got back to the main base, I would ask if there was any gym-like equipment and go there. In the future, when I calmed down and sorted out my thoughts, I realised that Saito had over 100 years of experience as a worker, so maybe it wasn’t such a strange story. However, at this point, I hadn’t fully comprehended the length of a year in this world yet.
“This quest was just the beginning. There’s still one more.”
Was this just the beginning? I lost confidence that I would be able to return alive.
#######################
Going to the next quest sheet, there was a creature there that was difficult to explain. It had the face of a dog and a round torso with distinctively different colours from its neck down. It’s feet had yellow fur and impressive claws. There was also a snake growing out from where it’s tail should have been.
“What is that?”
“It’s a Nue.”
“NUE？ I’ve never heard of that function before.”
“No, it’s the monster, Nue. Haven’t you heard about it before?”
“Oh, that’s what you mean. Aren’t Nue’s a kind of yokai that cries like a bird?”
“You know, I don’t know much about monsters that don’t appear in western movies. I just thought it had that kind of feeling to it.”
When you say that, it certainly did look like a Nue. It was a little different from what I had heard, but Nue’s were elusive creatures, so maybe it was one.
“So, what function is that?”
“That’s also an ARRAYFORMULA. It’s a combination of multiple formulas possessed by an ARRAYFORMULA.”
“Is that really possible?”
“It happens sometimes. That Nue has different parts, but you would often see them on a sheet with ARRAYFORMULA’s.”
“I see. So what’s fused together then? Is the dog head from LEFT?”
“That’s right. The snake on the tail is INDIRECT.”
“A function that converts a string to a cell range. I used it to dynamically summarise information from multiple sheets. It look something like this.”
=INDIRECT(CellWhereSheetNameIsWritten&”!A1″)
“That’s right. There’s no particular difference from Excel. And, the tiger legs are from COUNTA.”
“That counts the number of values within a range. Unlike COUNT, it can also count non-numeric values. For example, if you targeted three cells, ‘Excel’, ‘Takahashi’, and ‘2019’, COUNTA would return 3. COUNT would only count ‘2019’ and return 1”
“Hey, who are you talking to?”
“Sorry, I was trying to explain it in a way that even people who aren’t familiar with Excel could understand.”
“What are you talking about? I guess it’s fine. Finally, the tanuki body belongs to ROW.”
“The tanuki body? But, ROW? That’s rare. I’ve used it before as well. It returns the row number of a cell when given a cell reference. For example, ROW(C19) returns 19 and ROW(B9) returns 9.”
“You’re being very explanatory today, it’s making me feel uncomfortable.”
“I’m sorry, I just had this feeling of obligation… But, I can easily see what the contents of such a combined function are.”
“Yeah, LEFT is just a coincidence in this case, but you will often see combinations of INDIRECT, COUNTA, and ROW in ARRAYFORMULA. ROW doesn’t appear very often, but INDIRECT and COUNTA are common.”
Saito then began to write down his explanation on the wall, but as he was writing and chatting carefreely, the Nue started to come over.
※Functions
INDIRECT https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093377
COUNTA https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093991
COUNT https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093620
ROW https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093316