How to classify a list

Hi,

I am preparing a spreadsheet for a shipping brokerage report and I need to classify a series of cargo trips depending on their origin port and their destination port. So if the origin port is any UK port (from a list of about 20 ports) to any US port (from a list of about 30 ports) then it will return a category code that represents 'transatlantic'.

Same for, for example - any Asian port to any other Asian port will return a category code for inter-Asia.

And many other combinations Mid East to Europe, Australia to Asia, Inter-US etc.

Overall I have a list of about 200 ports that can be both origin and destination ports and depending on the combinations of ports they will be categorised with about 15 category codes depending on what type of journey is being made.

I am thinking of using VLOOKUP tables to categories the individual start and finish ports into region sub-categories, then combine those categories to produce a trip-code and then an IF func to assign a category code.

Any other ideas?

Thanks,
Reganbaha

Hi Miraun,

Thanks for your reply, I have basically done exactly how you described, but in the individual steps (ie. Vlookup port 1 code; Vlookup port 2 code; concatenate, Vlookup journey code) so I may just play with making it a bit more streamlined as you suggest.

Thanks
RBH