WRAPROWS in Google Sheets
2022-09-16 • 2 min read
In this article I will explain how to implement the Excel WRAPROWS() function in Google Sheets.
Named Function
Description
Wraps the provided array of values by rows after a specified number of elements to form a new array. The provided array is first converted to a vector.
Syntax
_WRAPROWS(vector, wrap_count, pad_with)
Example
_WRAPROWS(A1:A10, 3, "x")
Formula Definition
=ARRAYFORMULA(IFNA(VLOOKUP(SEQUENCE(CEILING(ROWS(FLATTEN(vector))/wrap_count),wrap_count),{SEQUENCE(ROWS(FLATTEN(vector))),FLATTEN(vector)},2,0),pad_with))
- vector - The array to wrap.
- wrap_count - The maximum number of values for each row.
- pad_with - The value with which to pad.
Explanation
Step 1 - Assign a numerical value to each element of the array
The first step is to assign a unique value to each element of the array. This is done using the SEQUENCE() function.
=SEQUENCE(ROWS(A1:A11))
Step 2 - Create a n × wrap_count array
The second step is to create a two-dimensional array of sequential numbers that has wrap_count columns and array_size/wrap_count (rounded to the next integer) rows. This is also done using the SEQUENCE function.
For this example I will assume wrap_count to be 3.
=SEQUENCE(CEILING(ROWS(A1:A11)/3),3)
Step 3 - Run a VLOOKUP()
The final step is to run a vertical lookup with the array from the previous step as the search_key, the array from Step 1 as the search column and the input array as the return column.
=ARRAYFORMULA(IFNA(VLOOKUP(SEQUENCE(CEILING(ROWS(A1:A11)/3),3),{SEQUENCE(ROWS(A1:A11)),A1:A11},2,0),"x"))
The VLOOKUP is wrapped in an IFNA()which acts as the pad_with parameter of the Named Function.
Note
The Named Function has a FLATTEN() wrapper on every occurrence of the input array. This is done to ensure that the formula works even if the array is not vertical.
That's all. Thanks for reading.