Alphabetizing, but keeping the same format. Also, find same cells across columns?

[DrHorrible]

Hello all,

So I have a spreadsheet that looks something like this-

Trait Name Traits Trait Name 2 Traits
Student Helpful Daughter Loyal
Thoughtful Helpful
Creative Friendly

And goes on and on with more trait names and more listed traits.

Ideally, I'd like for it to go through across the rows and say "I notice Helpful is in each trait row. I'm going to mark those in bold." and do that across my participants. I haven't a clue as to whether this can actually be done.

And for reference, my programming knowledge is EXTREMELY rudimentary- I just managed to do the 99 bottles of beer song in Java. So if this has to be programmed....well, please be patient with me.


If such a thing is impossible, at the very least, I'd like to say "Hey Excel, alphabetize all of my traits, but keep my formatting." The problem right now is that I'm telling Excel to alphabetize and it's completely ignoring my formatting. How would I do that?

Any help anyone would be willing to offer would be phenomenal!!!!

EDIT: For the record, I'm on a Mac. Excel 2008.

[JieJenn]

Can you post a sample file?

[DrHorrible]

Can you post a sample file?

I sure can!!

The bolded words are ones that appear in multiple lists across the same person. I'd like Excel to do this automatically instead of me having to go through it by hand.

If that's impossible, I'd like for each list to be individually alphabetized, so it's at least easier for me to try and pick out the duplicate words.


If you have any questions about my sample file, let me know!!

Thanks!

[JieJenn]

If you highlight the table A14:G28, click on conditional formatting, enter custom formula '=COUNTIF($A$14:$G$28,A14)>1, and just choose what you want the text to look like if the text repeated more than once.

FYI, consistent only appears once.

[DrHorrible]

If you highlight the table A14:G28, click on conditional formatting, enter custom formula '=COUNTIF($A$14:$G$28,A14)>1, and just choose what you want the text to look like if the text repeated more than once.

FYI, consistent only appears once.

=COUNTIF($A$14:$G$28,A14)>1

I get what the $A$14 and $G$28 mean, but what does the second A14 mean? I'm trying to apply this to my current data and it just won't do what I'm telling it to do.

[JieJenn]

What do you mean? What that formula is doing is it is counting how many times A14 shows up in range A14:G28. If A14 shows up more than once in range A14:G28 then it is going to return True.

[DrHorrible]

What do you mean? What that formula is doing is it is counting how many times A14 shows up in range A14:G28. If A14 shows up more than once in range A14:G28 then it is going to return True.

A14 is a blank cell though. How is it knowing to count the duplicates across traits?

I'm trying to do this for all my participants at once- for example in the sample file, I want to highlight the entire area I'm working with and tell it to find the duplicates.