I built a wedding planner spreadsheet this week (Excel + Google Sheets, no macros). Three formula tricks did most of the work, and they are useful in any tracker, not just weddings.

1. A seating chart that fills itself: TEXTJOIN over a filter

The guest list has one row per household with a Table column. The Seating tab has one row per table. Each table needs to show who is sitting there, as a comma list.

=TEXTJOIN(", ", TRUE, IF((Guests!$H$6:$H$405=B6)*(Guests!$F$6:$F$405<>"No"), Guests!$B$6:$B$405, ""))

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IF(condition, names, "") builds an array that holds the name where the table matches and the guest has not declined, and an empty string everywhere else.

TEXTJOIN with TRUE as the second argument skips the empty strings, so you get Lily Murphy & Lily, The Patel family, Aiden Carter & Ruby .

Multiplying two comparisons is an AND that works inside array formulas.

In older Excel this has to be entered as an array formula (Ctrl+Shift+Enter).…