Number combination application?

[Brontosaurus]

Okay this is a huge shot in the dark, but if I can find what I'm looking for it would make my job a whole lot easier:

I'm looking for a program which finds a sum of numbers in a specified database to equal a given number.

For example, there's 12 numbers in an excel sheet and I need to identify which of those numbers added together will equal a specified number:

1. 230,000
2. 12
3. 16
4. 21
5. 440,000
6. 900
7. 30
8. 330,000
9. 44
10. 234
11. 43
12. 88

I will then specify I'm looking for the sum to be 1,000,000. The application will then highlight rows 1, 5 and 8.

I'm looking for a program or a macro which could highlight those cells.

 

[biena]

explanation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subset_sum_problem

excel:
http://www.tushar-mehta.com/excel/templates/match_values/index.html
http://www.mrexcel.com/forum/excel-questions/294289-find-combination-numbers-equal-given-sum.html

programming solution:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/...-combinations-of-numbers-to-reach-a-given-sum

 

[GreGorGy]

This sounds like the A Word or Two problem: from a given set of numbers, find another. Except in reverse.

Look at the source on these two pages:
http://incoherency.co.uk/countdown/
and
http://www.crosswordtools.com/numbers-game/

and you may find a way to go backwards.

 

[Brontosaurus]

explanation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subset_sum_problem

excel:
http://www.tushar-mehta.com/excel/templates/match_values/index.html
http://www.mrexcel.com/forum/excel-questions/294289-find-combination-numbers-equal-given-sum.html

programming solution:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/...-combinations-of-numbers-to-reach-a-given-sum

You sir, are an absolute hero! The information requires a bit of tweaking, for example it cannot find numbers with decimal points, but it works! It's just a pity it takes ages to run the macro

Thanks a ton! This will help me a lot