Formula to compare two lists

[paksao]

Basically I will soon receive a spreadsheet showing overhead costs. Each row will show a new record and each column will show a detail such as name ,description, unique ID, notes etc.

I need to compare it to a similar spreadsheet showing the previous year, and 1 part of my analysis will be to show which costs are new, and which ones were not present this year but were present last year.

Due to these differences, there will be differing numbers of rows between the two years.


My idea was to create a new spreadsheet or worksheet and copy/paste the unique ID from last year into column A, along with the corresponding cost amount into column B.

Then copy/paste the unique ID from this year into column C, along with the corresponding cost amount into column D.

This is where I get stuck trying to get an appropriate formula to highlight what I want.

Can you help?

[NBVC]

So if you want to see what price for item in C2 was in in the A:B range,

=IF(ISNA(Vlookup(C2,A:B,2,FALSE)),"-",Vlookup(C2,A:B,2,FALSE)) copied down.

if you want to look for A2 price in C:D

=if(isna(Vlookup(A2,C:D,2,FALSE)),"-",Vlookup(A2,C:D,2,FALSE)) copied down.

these will return a "-" if no match found.

[paksao]

I have made a few adjustments so it highlights the ID and the cost, but I have used your ideas

thanks