bflooks

hey guys. just started a new job today on the other side of production. rather than building unix servers, i am not on the sales support side. i was given a task to compare 2 excel spreadsheets, both having a column with serial numbers, among other columns with misc. info. i need to compare the 2 lists of serial numbers and come up with a list of serial numbers that are NOT on both. how do i go about doing this? i know it can be done, but i am not that good with excel...yet. thanks.

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tulsa_97SR5

the vlookup function will work really well, let me dig up a quick explanation from an old post.

edit: here it is
highlight the second set of data & name that range something, like 'data'.
in the first empty column on the first sheet use vlookup, formula should be something like
=vlookup(a2, data, 2, false)
where a2 is the cell with the ssn you want to find a match for, data is the name of the second block of data, 2 is the column in data that has email addresses, and false tells it to only return exact matches.
The named range needs to have the ssn in the leftmost column of the named range.

let me know if this doesn't make sense, i know the feild names probably don't apply for your scenario.

__________________
Brian
85 sr5, 5spd - back on the road, doing DD duty for now
86 2wd reg cab - future project
90 sr5, 97 - gone

bflooks

blocks mean seperate files, correct?

should i just make a new sheet, using column a and b with just the serial numbers, and try to run this? and if i want just the ones that don't match...instead of using false, should i use true?

tulsa_97SR5

Get one set of data on sheet 1 and the other on sheet 2 in the same workbook. highlight all of the first set of data and name it data1, name the second set data2. Using false tells it find an exact match, true would try to find a partial match. The serial numbers should be the first column in each data set. If you get it set up exactly like that the formula for sheet1 would be =vlookup(a2,data2,1,false) <- put that in the first empty column on sheet 1. It will either populate the serial number or N/A if no match is found. On sheet 2 it would be =vlookup(a2,data1,1,false)

It's like a SELECT statement if you've worked with SQL much, with the named ranges acting like tables.

__________________
Brian
85 sr5, 5spd - back on the road, doing DD duty for now
86 2wd reg cab - future project
90 sr5, 97 - gone