Can I merge workbooks in Excel with fewer records in 2nd workbook?

[Guest]

1st workbook has around 2500 records, and the second has about 2000 records.
The records on the 2nd exist on the 1st, but have different values in 1
field. I'd like to merge the 2nd workbook's updated fields into the 1st
'master' list. Is this possible?

 

[Fredrik Wahlgren]

1st workbook has around 2500 records, and the second has about 2000 records.
The records on the 2nd exist on the 1st, but have different values in 1
field. I'd like to merge the 2nd workbook's updated fields into the 1st
'master' list. Is this possible?

How did this happend? Where do these records come from? Have you entered
them manually?

/Fredrik

 

[Guest]

Let's say that column A in each table has an identifier - customer #, GL
account #, something unique anyway.

Let's also say that column B in both contains the field you want to update.

Insert a new column B in the workbook with 2500 records, so that the field
to update is now column C

Use this formula in the inserted column

=IF(ISNA(VLOOKUP(A1, '[other book.xls]sheet
name'!$A$1:$B$1000,2,false)),C1,VLOOKUP(A1, '[other book.xls]sheet
name'!$A$1:$B$1000,2,false))

Basically it says that, if the unique ID is found in the other workbook, use
the value from column B, otherwise keep the existing value

When you all is complete, copy the inserted column's values, Edit | Paste
Special | Values, then delete column C