adding two new columns ov info depending if names are correct

[Blaino]

ok i have two excel files, I want to add two new colums to one ov the files, both colums will be numeric.

I want it so that if names are equal in one file to the other I can retrive info from the main file.

Ther will be a case ov duplicate names, the main file contains 5000rows so doing everythin manually is gonna take me a long time....is ther a code I can write and use,

Even if I got the majority and it highlighted the duplicates?
anyways if anyone knows be a great help,il check back for replies.if ya need more info i can provide. thanks

[Richard Buttrey]

H

You don't necessarily need VBA code. Straigtforward XL functionality will do.

If there are duplicates, are the values you want to get from the duplicate rows all the same or are they different? If they are different you are going to need to decide which of the duplicates should be used to pick up the value.

So if all values are the same just use a standard VLOOKUP() formula.

If the values (for the duplicate items) are different and you want the maximum value then sort your data so that the values are in ascending order and then use a VLOOKUP() but without using the fourth optional parameter. Use Copy and Paste Special values to convert the VLOOKUP formulae to values.

If you want to preserve the order of your data then before doing a sort add a helper column, fill it with the values 1-5000 and include it in the sort so that after the VLOOKUP you can resort back on the original order.

[Blaino]

ok thanks for the reply, bit hard to take everything in ther but iv never used VLOOKUP() So il need bit more detail on that.

Yes for instance the names, searching by surname will have multiple duplicates so then I would check maybe number or adresses against the name to see if it matched and if I was happy I would copy and paste it across, this was the manual way I was doing it.

I got as far as surnames begging with "c" after nearly 5 hours doing it so a formula would be nice also ther is instances where ther is no number to check against but ther is otherfields.....its kinda hard to explain. could I add you on instant messanger for help?



the two fields I am looking for one has a unique code