Comparing Duplicate Columns/Rows

[mindstate]

I've been searching on google to try to find an answer to my question, but still have had no luck.

I have 2 spreadsheets.. Spreadsheet 1 is an gigantic list of names, addresses, phone numbers, etc.. Spreadsheet 2 is a very smaller list of names, addresses, etc..

I want to compare both Spreadsheets based on first/last name and have it highlight any names that show up in both Spreadsheet 1 and 2.

The way ive been trying is Conditional Formatting, which sort of works. What i think the problem is the first names are in one column and last names in another column and Excel is highlighting any duplicate, as opposed to highlighting just first and last name.

Not sure if i explained this right, but this has been killing me all day. Any help would be awesome. Thanks

[6StringJazzer]

One quick & easy way is to add a column to the end of your data on each sheet. If the first name is in column A and the last name is in column B, then the formula in row 2 of this added column will look like this:

=A2&"+"&B2

This creates a sort of a key that combines first name and last name. Then you can match on that between the two sheets to do your formatting.

There might be a way to do this with formulas that doesn't require adding more columns but I could have this implemented this before I could figure that out.

[mindstate]

I was actually thinking the same thing. I'm actually using

=PROPER(B63226&" "&D63226)

to keep the names properly formatted.

Once ive done this though, that still leaves me having to find and highlight duplicate entries. Could i then use conditional formatting?

thanks for the fast response

[mindstate]

hey man thanks that worked!

i used what you told me to, then ran a duplicate removal in the FULL NAME column and it worked..thanks so much man..life saver