Smatgal,
Thanks for this suggestion. I think this will give me what I'm looking for,
but I'm such a novice at Excel that I have more questions. Allow me to
explain my data in more detail and let's see if I can apply what you
recommend:
- these two spreadsheets represent individual sales transactions (about
7,000 total, so you can see why I don't want to do this by hand). The tables
are produced by two different accounting systems in our company, and they
don't agree (which ultimately affects the paycheck of several people,
including me). One of the tables (let's call it Table A) shows significantly
more transactions than the other (Table B), so I'm trying to identify the
transactions that are unique to Table A. The transactions in Table B
represent what's already been paid on (in commissions), so the important data
is the set of unique transaction in Table B. This means that I have to
compare the two tables and strip the rows out of Table A that already have a
match in Table B.
The columns are not completely the same, but there are some common elements
and I can strip out the rest. The common elements are transaction date,
serial number, and account number.
So, given your instructions, here are some additional questions:
1. In your para 1, I already have the data sorted by transaction date, so
all I need to do is add a column for count, each with a value of 1. I'm
assuming this is working on a merged table that contains both Table A and
Table B, correct?
2. I'm new to pivot tables, but it sounds straightforward. What I end up
with is a count of how many times each transaction appears. I guess I can
then sort by the count, and delete everything greater than 1.
3. I've never used vlookup, so I'll have to read the Excel help file to
figure out how that's used.
I think I can get this to work, but let me know if I misunderstood anything.
Thanks again for your help!
W Mark